Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has called a general election for 1 November after a member of her ruling coalition threatened to withdraw its support over her handling of the country’s controversial Covid mass mink cull. The Social Liberal party issued an ultimatum demanding that Frederiksen, the centre-left leader who became Denmark’s youngest prime minister in 2019 aged 41, call elections before parliament’s first debate on 6 October, seven months before they were due. “I have today informed the Queen that elections to the Folketing [parliament] will be held,” she told a press conference on Wednesday. “We want a broad government with parties on both sides of the political centre line.” Polls show the race is too close to call, with the “red bloc” of left-leaning parties led by Frediksen’s Social Democrats on 47-50% and its rival “blue bloc”, which includes the Liberal and Conservative parties and three nationalist parties, on 49-50%. Frederiksen’s popularity has slipped after the government’s 2020 decision to cull Denmark’s entire captive mink population of 15 million for fear of a Covid-19 mutation moving from the animals to humans that could jeopardise future vaccines. A parliament-appointed commission said in June that the government had lacked legal justification for the cull and made “grossly misleading” statements when it ordered Europe’s first compulsory shutdown of an entire farm sector. While the cull was illegal, the commission agreed with Frederiksen that she had not broken the law intentionally. The decision devastated Denmark’s mink industry. The country was previously one of the world’s biggest exporters of furs. Denmark is the focal point of a global political crisis after two pipelines carrying gas from Russia to Europe across the Baltic Sea were last week damaged in what world leaders have called an act of sabotage. Frederiksen conceded on Wednesday that it was “peculiar to have a general election in the middle of an international crisis”, but has been speaking openly for some time about governing with centre-right opposition parties. She said a broad government would “get us through uncertain times”, adding that the time had come “to try a new form of government in Denmark. We are ready for both compromise and collaboration.” The Social Liberal party leader, Sofie Carsten Nielsen, rejected claims the party had been irresponsible in forcing a general election at such a dangerous time, insisting Denmark needed an election “so we can move on from the campaigning”. A poll for the Ritzau news agency on Monday suggested the red bloc would win 86 of the 179 seats in parliament, one more than the blue bloc on 85. Four seats were projected to go to the new Moderate party headed by the former prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen. Rasmussen, who has previously led the Liberal party, has not so far said which bloc he would support, suggesting instead he would like to see a grand coalition government of moderate centre-left and centre-right parties.