Parliamentary elections in Iceland

Today is a big day in Iceland. Election day, after 22:00 local time tonight we will start seeing what our government could look like for the next 4 years.

Unlike other news sources, bloggingreykjavik.net has no political agenda the facts are as follows:

Iceland is run by a parliament called the Althing. The althing was founded originally 930 and makes it one of the oldest parliaments in the world.

The current government is lead by the independence party in coalition with the progressive party. The opposition is currently The liberal party, the social democrats and the left-green movement. A newcomer to the political table is the Icelandic movement only recently formed.

The Icelandic parliament has 63 seats of which the government needs to have 32 in order to be functional. Because of the limited amount of seats each party needs at least 5% of the votes in order to get in. If a party doesn’t get enough votes to get an elected official their votes aren’t counted. Iceland is divided into 6 constituencies each with a varying number of MP’s.

Bloggingreykjavik.net believes very strongly in the democratic process and is proud of the fact that election participation is normally above 85% in Iceland. Last elections in 2003 87,7% of votes had their say!

It will be interesting to see what happens after tonight. Have a look at the various parties if you are intested to see where they stand.


- X-B The Progressive party
- X-D The Independence party
- X-F The Liberal party
- X-I The Icelandic movement
- X-S The Social democrats
- X-V The Left-green movement

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