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In general, ethnic minorities are strongly under-represented in representative bodies; however, there is no rule without exceptions. In the municipal elections in Denmark in 2001, the number of ethnic minorities who won election to the local councils throughout the country almost corresponded to their percentage in the general population. The explanation for this can be found in the Danish local election system, with its combination of proportional representation and preferential voting. This system is exceptionally conducive to collective mobilization, which results in a relatively high voter turnout among ethnic minorities and a fair representation in local councils. Since 1981, foreign citizens with permanent residence in Denmark have had the right to vote in local elections. This article describes the development in the representation of ethnic minorities since that time based on a study of all the municipalities in Denmark.

The existence of priming (i.e. the fact that the standards people use to make political evaluations shift in response to changes in media coverage of political issues) has become generally accepted. However, most of the evidence for the priming mechanism comes from experiments or analyses of certain specific events. This article presents evidence of priming from a longitudinal study of the Danish population's evaluation of the Danish government. The study consists of 12 measurements over four years from 1999 to 2003. The analysis indicates that priming effects are often moderated by political knowledge, but that the effect changes from case to case. The article shows that both the overall priming effects and the effect of the moderator are contingent on the political context of the priming situation. Important aspects of the moderating context are message intensity, the easiness of the issue, the politicisation of the issue, the assessment of the government's issue responsibility and the timing of the evaluation.