Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksenannoucned Wednesday that the country would be holding a snap national election after her ruling coalition fractured in the aftermath of a mink cull that took place during the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Frederiksen, the leader of the Social Democrats, announced the snap elections after her party’s allies, the Social Liberal Party, threatened to hold a vote of confidence against her minority government, which has been in power since 2019.

The snap election comes after Fredericksen has lost popularity over her role in the culling of the country’s entire captive mink population during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 in order to allegedly protect humans from possible mutations of the virus, Euronews reports.

Fredericksen and her government were criticised in June of this year by a parliamentary commission which slammed the government for killing millions of animals, including healthy mink not infected by the coronavirus. A total of eleven people were infected by the animals but no evidence emerged that the mutation was any more or less virulent than other strains of the virus.

However, shortly after the culling began it was found the government had no legal basis to force the mink farmers to kill the animals.

The snap election, which is set to take place on November 1st, is likely to be a tight race between Frederiksen’s centre-left bloc and a possible conservative-populist bloc as polls but the two sides are nearly neck and neck according to a report from broadcaster France24.

According to the broadcaster, at least 13 parties are projected to win seats in the upcoming election and at least 45 per cent of Danes have said they will be switching their vote to another party.

One of the parties likely to emerge as a new force in the parliament are the Denmark Democrats led by former immigration minister Inger Stojberg who was convicted last year for separating adult migrants from their child brides during the migrant crisis and sentenced to 60 days in prison.

A poll released Wednesday put the Denmark Democrats at 9.7 per cent, ahead of the populist Danish People’s Party (DF) who scored just two per cent and just behind the conservatives.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.