REYKJAVIK: Iceland’s opposition Social Democrats overtook the governing Independence Party of Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson after a snap election prompted by the collapse of his fraught coalition government, public broadcaster RUV reported on Sunday.
With all ballots counted, the Social Democratic Alliance led by Kristrun Frostadottir finished first with 20.8 per cent of the vote.
This meant the party secured 15 seats in Iceland’s 63-seat parliament and more than doubled the support it saw in the last election in 2021, when it obtained 9.9 per cent.
“I’m extremely proud of all the work that we’ve done. We obviously see that people want to see changes in the political landscape,” Frostadottir told AFP as results started coming in late on Saturday.
Benediktsson’s Independence Party secured 14 seats with 19.4 per cent of the vote, down from the 24.4 per cent it won in 2021, marking the worst result the party had ever recorded.
In third place was the Liberal Reform Party with 15.8 per cent.
Benediktsson’s three-party, left-right coalition resigned in October, almost a year before the deadline to hold parliamentary elections.
The coalition of the Independence Party, the Left-Green Movement and the centre-right Progressive Party collapsed over the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers.
The Left-Green Movement also saw its support crumble and won only 2.3 per cent of the vote, falling below the five per cent cut-off to enter parliament.
The Progressive Party also recorded its worst result ever, receiving only 7.8 per cent, down from 17.3 per cent in 2021.
Put together, the coalition parties had dropped from just over 54 per cent of the vote in 2021 to less than 30 per cent.
“The main message from the voters this time, is that they punished the government parties — all three government parties — quite considerably,” Olafur Hardarson, professor of political science at the University of Iceland, told AFP.
Hardarson added that this has been the trend for all governments since the 2008 financial crisis that ravaged Iceland’s over-indebted banks.
The one exception was Katrin Jakobsdottir of the Left-Green Movement, who retained her post as prime minister in the last election.
Benediktsson took over as premier in April 2024 after Jakobsdottir resigned to run for the presidency, which she failed to win.
Another that missed the parliamentary cut-off was Iceland’s Pirate Party, which secured three per cent of the vote — meaning the parliament now will have only six parties instead of eight.
In a country battling inflation and high interest rates where around 268,000 people are eligible to vote, the economy, housing and healthcare had been foremost on voters’ minds.
Despite causing the demise of the government, immigration was not a galvanising issue among voters in a country where one in five residents is foreign-born.
“It is very prominent in the public debate amongst politicians, but still it does not seem to be an issue that people are putting at the front of their list of important issues,” Eirikur Bergmann, a politics professor at Bifrost University, told AFP in English.
According to a Gallup poll published in early November, only 32 per cent of respondents listed immigration as a key issue and just 18 per cent included asylum.
By contrast, healthcare, economic issues and housing were top concerns for more than 60 per cent.
Parties will now begin negotiations to try to form a majority government via a coalition, Bergmann said.
Hardarson told AFP that predicting what coalition would take power is tricky as Icelandic politics do not follow traditional right-left blocs and its “coalition system is a very open one”.
However, one likely coalition, according to Hardarson, could be the Social Democratic Alliance and the Liberal Reform Party together with the People’s Party — which earned 13.8 per cent.
If that would be the case, Hardarson noted that the parties have expressed that they are open to holding a vote on resuming Icelandic EU accession talks — which were halted in 2013. – AFP
