Danes vote in polls which could see first woman PM

Danes voted in general elections Thursday as opinion polls suggested they would hand power to the centre-left after a decade in opposition and give the country its first woman prime minister. Current Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, 47, is struggling to get his minority centre-right coalition government elected for a fourth straight term, but the latest surveys published Thursday continued to indicate the odds were against him. If the government, made up of Rasmussen's Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, loses, it will also end the powerful influence wielded by its key parliamentary ally the populist, anti-immigration Danish People's Party (DPP). Helle Thorning-Schmidt, 44, who heads the Social Democrats and a broad centre-left coalition, meanwhile seemed likely to become Denmark's first woman prime minister. A slew of polls handed the left-leaning opposition, made up of the Social Democrats, Social Liberals, Socialist People's Party and Red Greens a clear lead over the outgoing government and its parliamentary supporters, the DPP, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal Alliance. While showing a narrowing gap between the blocs compared to polls in recent days, none showed the government leading the pack, and that has been the case since Rasmussen called elections late last month. Polls indicated that the centre-left would win between 90 and 92 seats in the 179-seat parliament, against between 83 and 85 seats for the centre-right. Denmark's autonomous territories Greenland and the Faroe Islands hold two seats each. In the last elections in 2007, the centre-right government and its allies took 94 seats against 81 for the centre-left opposition. A Voxmeter poll for the Ritzau news agency meanwhile showed that Thorning-Schmidt is by far the preferred candidate to head the next government, with 48 percent overall backing her, and a full 59.7 percent of women questioned saying she would make the best prime minister. Rasmussen meanwhile received 45.2-percent overall backing in that poll of 1,751 eligible voters. Shortly after polling stations opened at 9:00 am (0700 GMT), voters were already streaming into polling stations under a clear blue sky. After a brief, three-week campaign focused almost exclusively on how to reboot Denmark's crisis-hit economy, some four million of Denmark's 5.6 million inhabitants were eligible to cast their ballots before polling stations close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT). Voter turnout is traditionally high in Denmark. In 2007, more than 86.5 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots.