Denmark's ruling centre-right coalition girded for possible defeat in an election today as voters threatened to take out their anger with the country's economic plight on the party that has led the country for a decade.
Opinion polls heading into today's general election showed the centre-left, or "Red bloc", of Helle Thorning-Schmidt set for a win against the "Blue bloc" of incumbent prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.
The polls have been narrowing, however, and the final result may hang on last-minute appeals from both leaders, or on kingmaker parties from either left or right.
Mr Rasmussen said yesterday he was confident he could pull off a come-from-behind victory but acknowledged that voters were in the mood for a change.
In a last one-on-one debate with Ms Thorning-Schmidt he said the Red bloc would unwind what he had achieved.
"All the reform decisions we have taken - on unemployment benefits, early retirement, national pensions - those you will roll back and that will make Denmark poorer," he said.
The state of the economy has been the major issue of the campaign, with the governing parties, like others in Europe, under fire for presiding over the worst economic downturn since second Word War.
Ms Thorning-Schmidt, who would become Denmark's first female prime minister if she wins, has argued that Mr Rasmussen has failed to spur growth and built up the deficit. Her platform includes increased government spending, along with an unusual plan of making everyone work 12 minutes more per day.
An extra hour of productivity each week, it is argued, would help kick-start growth.
"Denmark needs change, Denmark needs to move on and Denmark needs my leadership," she said.
A Gallup poll published yesterday showed the prime minister cutting the opposition's lead to 2.3 percentage points, with 48.7 per cent support for Mr Rasmussen's Blue bloc to 51. per cent for the Reds.
Anything closer might mean that smaller parties - now aligned with either the Blues or the Reds - could alter the balance by switching sides.
Small groups include the centrist Social Liberals, the anti-immigration Danish People's Party and four parliamentarians from North Atlantic dependencies Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Denmark has been spared much of the trauma being suffered by western European countries because it remains outside the euro zone. This means it is not involved in the cost of bailing out debt-ridden countries like Greece, an issue that has provoked anger in neighbouring Germany.
But the economic crisis turned healthy surpluses into deficits, estimated to climb to 4.6 per cent of GDP next year.
Danish banks have also been struggling, with small bank Fjordbank Mors falling into the hands of administrators in June, the ninth Danish bank to be taken over by the state since the start of the crisis in 2008.
Ms Thorning-Schmidt, a former member of the European Parliament, is part of an extended European political family, married to the son of Neil and Glenys Kinnock. Neil was a European commissioner and British Labour Party leader, Glenys a European parliamentary deputy and Europe minister in the last Labour government.
Mr Rasmussen, widely known by his middle name Lokke in part because he is Denmark's third unrelated Rasmussen prime minister in a row, is best known on the international scene for hosting the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in 2009.
His leadership at the talks, which failed to agree on binding emissions cuts, came under criticism.
Reuters