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The Social Democratic Alliance wins most of the votes, but will have to form a coalition to govern.
Iceland’s centre-left Social Democratic Alliance won the majority of votes early elections caused by the collapse of the ruling coalition over the past seven years, the final count shows.
The Social Democrats won 15 seats in the 63-seat parliament, the Althingi, with 20.8 percent of the vote, state broadcaster RUV reported on Sunday.
The conservative Independence Party, which led the outgoing government, won 14 seats with a 19.4% share of the vote, and the centrist Liberal Reformist Party won 11 seats and 15.8% of the vote. Three other parties also won seats.
Icelanders voted on Saturday after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy forced Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson to pull the plug on his coalition government and call early elections.
This weekend’s results more than doubled the share the Social Democrats won in the previous 2021 election.
“I am very proud of all the work we have done. We obviously see that people want to see changes in the political landscape,” Social Democrat leader Kristrun Mjoll Frostadottir said as the results began to come in.
Frostadottir, 36, will likely try to find coalition partners to command a parliamentary majority.
“It depends a lot on whether he can convince the president that he is more likely to be able to form a coalition,” Stefania Oskarsdottir, a political scientist at the University of Iceland, told the Reuters news agency.
“It seems that the Reform Party is critical in this because they have the option of joining a coalition with the Social Democrats and the People’s Party, and they also have the option of forming a coalition with the Independence Party and the of the Center”, Oskarsdottir. he said
The Pirate Party lost all its seats in this election, so only six parties will have seats in the new parliament.
Frostadottir has pledged to tackle the country’s cost of living crisis, which has been caused by inflation and high borrowing costs – a challenge countries around the world have faced in recent years and a thorn in the side of the incumbent parties, including the Democrats in the United States.
In February 2023, inflation peaked at 10.4 percent in Iceland. Although inflation slowed to 5.1 percent in October, it is still significantly higher than much of the rest of the world.
In comparison, US inflation was 2.6% last month, while the European Union rate was 2.3%
Public finances have also been strained by repeated volcanic eruptions in south-west Iceland, which have displaced thousands of people. Migration has also been a key issue in this election as Iceland struggles to take in asylum seekers.
The number of refugees seeking protection in Iceland rose to more than 4,000 in each of the past three years, compared to a previous average of less than 1,000. Iceland has a population of less than 400,000.
