By Anna Ringstrom and Jeremy Gaunt
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark's centre-left "Red bloc" was poised to win power on Thursday and oust centre-right Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen in an election driven by voter anger over the state of the economy, early exit polls showed.
If they prove correct, Social Democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt would be the next prime minister, the first woman to hold the post in Denmark. The centre-right "Blue bloc" has been in power for 10 years.
One poll, by TV2, projected Thorning-Schmidt's grouping would win a clear majority of 93 seats in the 179-seat parliament. Her Social Democratic party would be the largest in parliament with 44 seats.
The state of the economy has been the overriding issue of the campaign, with the governing coalition parties, like others in Europe, under fire for presiding over the worst downturn since World War Two.
Thorning-Schmidt has attacked Rasmussen for failing to spur growth and for taking the country deep into deficit.
"We can say farewell to 10 years of bourgeois rule that has stalled and get a new government and a new majority in Denmark," she told reporters earlier in the day.
Her platform includes increased government spending, along with an unusual plan to make everyone work 12 minutes more per day. An extra hour of productivity each week, her group argues, would help kick-start economic growth.
For his part, Rasmussen appealed to voters to stick with him and, he said, not let the centre-left unravel what has been achieved.
"We (should) stay on the course that has (brought us) reasonably through the crisis, create new optimism in Denmark, not create obstacles to private consumption and not make it more expensive to be Danish," he said.
ECONOMIC WOE
Denmark has been spared much of the trauma suffered by west European countries because it remains outside the euro zone. This means it is not involved in bailing out debt-laden countries like Greece, an issue that has stirred popular anger in neighbouring Germany.
But the economic crisis has turned Denmark's healthy surpluses into deficits, forecast to climb to 4.6 percent of GDP next year.
Danish banks have also been struggling, with small bank Fjordbank Mors falling into the hands of administrators in June, the ninth Danish bank to be taken over by the state since the start of the crisis in 2008.
Thorning-Schmidt is part of an extended European political family, married to the son of Neil and Glenys Kinnock. Neil was a European commissioner and British Labour Party leader, Glenys a European parliamentary deputy and Europe minister in the last Labour government.
Rasmussen, widely known as Lokke in part because he is Denmark's third unrelated Rasmussen prime minister in a row, is best known on the international scene for hosting failed U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen in 2009.
(Additional reporting by John Acher, Mette Fraende, Shida Chayesteh, Teis Jensen, Terje Solsvik, Ole Mikkelsen, Jakob Vesterager; Writing by Jeremy Gaunt)
