Kasper Møller Hansen, an election researcher at the University of Copenhagen, warns that the loss of political credibility could hit political parties hard on election day.
“It may affect many[voters]in the short term. But at the end of the day, policy is still the most important thing for the majority of voters,” he says.
According to the latest political poll conducted for Litzau by analytics agency Voxmeter, the Conservative Party has 11.4 percent of the vote.
This is a significant drop from the 16.2% of the vote that the party won in the 5 September poll.
media attention
According to Møller Mortensen, part of this decline was probably due to the fact that there were more media articles about Conservative leaders.
Recently, many media reports have focused on Pape’s personal life, some indiscretion, and the fact that he called Greenland “Africa on Ice.”
Since then, Pape Poulsen has apologized to Greenland MP Arya Chemnitz for her remarks about Greenland, according to Extrabladet.
According to Moller Hansen, the coverage clearly hurts the Conservative Party.
When it comes to the credibility of politicians, hypocrisy can be very damaging when it comes to reputation. Especially when it comes to politics.
For example, if the Minister of Transport is caught driving too fast, or if a politician talks passionately about sending his children to public school, but not sending his own children to private school. If so, it could be perceived as hypocritical, say election researchers.
“It may take time to regain what you lost[note: credibility],” he adds.
The case of Løkke Rasmussen
Kasper Møller Hansen highlights the case of former Liberal Party leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen. Lars Løkke Rasmussen was in trouble from 2014 to his 2015 with a scandal about clothes his political party bought for him.
“In that case, we actually found that up to 200,000 votes could be attributed to the reduced credibility Løkke had in the eyes of voters,” says the election researcher.
The impact of the scandal was reflected in subsequent measures of party and leader credibility.
https://www.thelocal.com/20221008/a-dent-in-political-credibility-can-cost-parties-in-denmark-thousands-of-votes-researcher-warns/ Declining political credibility could cost Danish parties thousands of votes, researchers warn
