(Bloomberg) -- A Danish opposition leader is tripping up in an unusual scandal just ahead of a general election.
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Soren Pape Poulsen, the leading challenger to Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, is hemorrhaging support after acknowledging that he made false claims about the origins of his soon-to-be ex-husband, Josue Medina Vasquez. The two are in the process of divorcing.
For years, Poulsen, leader of Denmark’s conservative party, claimed that his husband is Jewish and that he is the nephew of a former president of the Dominican Republic. Recent revelations in local media showed that Vasquez is neither of those, forcing Poulsen to acknowledge that he had given incorrect information to the public.
The controversy is hurting his chances of toppling Frederiksen’s Social Democratic government in national elections expected to be held soon. Poulsen has lost 4.4 percentage points in backing in the last two weeks, according to a Voxmeter poll published on Tuesday. The conservative leader had surged in polls to overtake the head of the Liberal Party, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, as the main contender to defeat Frederiksen, who has been forced to call elections no later than Oct. 4. The vote is usually held about three-to-four weeks after it’s called.
“His credibility has taken a hit,” Carina Saxlund Bischoff, an associate professor in political science at the Roskilde University, said in a phone interview. “The strange thing about this affair is that there seem...
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