Denmark has elected Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a second four-year term, embracing his government's pledge to keep immigration in check and taxes, among Europe's highest, from rising.
Mr Fogh Rasmussen is the first liberal prime minister in the Scandinavian country to win back-to-back terms, and after nearly all the votes were tallied in yesterday's election, he said: "It's one thing to win an election, but it's more difficult to be re-elected."
As he made his way through a packed crowd of reporters and some 1,000 party members who had gathered in downtown Copenhagen to celebrate the win, Fogh Rasmussen said it had been "a great evening for us tonight". All around him, supporters chanted "Anders! Anders!"
"It is a strengthened government," he said.
Opposition leader Mogens Lykketoft earlier conceded defeat, calling the results "bad" for his Social Democrats. He said he would step down as the leader of the party that helped build the Scandinavian country's vaunted welfare state.
Fogh Rasmussen's government "had a much stronger impact that we have been able to have", said Lykketoft, 59, who had helmed the Social Democrats since 2002.
With 99% of the votes tallied by elections officials, the governing bloc - a coalition of Liberals, Conservatives and the anti-immigration Danish Peoples Party - received 54% of the vote and was set to get 95 seats in the 179-seat Folketing, or parliament.
The Social Democratic-led opposition, which had 46% of the vote, was set to get 80 seats. The four remaining seats are allotted evenly between the Faeroe Islands and Greenland, both semi-independent Danish territories.
More than four million Danes were eligible. Turnout was 84%, similar to the 2001 vote. The highest turnout was in 1943 with 89.5%.
Final results and turnout figures are expected today.
AP