The Social Democratic Alliance will win the most votes but will need to form a coalition to govern.
Iceland’s center-left Social Democratic Alliance won the most votes Snap elections Driven by the collapse of the coalition that has been in power for 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 share of 19.4 percent of the vote, and the centrist Liberal Reform Party won 11 seats and 15.8 percent of the vote. Three other parties also won seats.
Icelanders voted on Saturday after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy. Pull the plug over his coalition government and call early elections.
This weekend’s results more than double the Social Democrats’ winning share in the previous election until 2021.
“I’m very proud of all the work we’ve done. We obviously see that people want to see changes in the political landscape,” Social Democratic leader Kristrun Mjöl Frostadottir said as the results began to come in.
Frostadottir, 36, will try to find a coalition partner to secure a parliamentary majority.
“It very much depends on whether they can convince the president that they are more likely to form a coalition,” Stefania Öskarsdóttir, a political scientist at the University of Iceland, told the Reuters news agency.
“The Reform Party seems to be decisive in this because they have the option of joining a coalition with the Social Democrats and the People’s Party, and they have the option of forming a coalition with the Independent Party and the Center Party,” Öskarsdóttir said.
The Pirate Party lost all of its seats in this election, meaning that only six parties would hold seats in the new parliament.
Fróstadóttir has pledged to address the country’s cost-of-living crisis caused by inflation and high borrowing costs — a challenge facing countries worldwide in recent years and a thorn in the side for parties in power, including Democrats in the United States.
In February 2023, inflation in Iceland rose to 10.4 percent. Although inflation eased to 5.1 percent in October, it was still significantly higher than the rest of the world.
In comparison, inflation in the US was 2.6 percent last month while the rate in the European Union was 2.3 percent
Public finances have also been strained by repeated volcanic eruptions in southwest Iceland, which have displaced thousands of people. Immigration is a key issue in this election, as Iceland struggles to accommodate asylum seekers.
The number of refugees seeking protection in Iceland has risen above 4,000 in each of the past three years, compared to a previous average of less than 1,000. Iceland has less than 400,000 inhabitants.
