2013 Icelandic parliamentary election


Parliamentary elections were held in Iceland on 27 April 2013. Fifteen parties contested the elections, compared to just seven in the previous elections. The result was a victory for the two centre-right opposition parties, the Independence Party and Progressive Party, which subsequently formed a coalition government. The parties were eurosceptic and their win brought to a halt partially completed negotiations with the European Union regarding Icelandic membership.

Background

The previous elections in 2009 were won by the Social Democratic Alliance — the first time that the Independence Party was not the largest party in the Althing. The Social Democratic Alliance was able to form a coalition with the Left-Green Movement. As a result of this, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the first female prime minister of Iceland, as well as the first openly lesbian head of government in the world.

Incumbent parliament

Five parties were elected at the previous election, held in April 2009. Since then, the parliamentary representation for one of these, Citizens' Movement, first mostly moved to The Movement and then, in March 2012, to the new party Dawn. One of the MPs elected for the Citizens' movement, Þráinn Bertelsson, left the parliamentary party almost immediately and then a 16 months after the 2009 election he joined the Left-green movement. In January 2012, the new party Solidarity was founded by an incumbent MP, Lilja Mósesdóttir, who was elected as a member of the Left-Green Movement. Another new party, Bright Future, was formed in February 2012 with the involvement of two MPs from, respectively, the Progressive Party and Social Democratic Alliance. One MP originally elected for Citizens' Movement, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, also participated in the establishment of a new party in 2012, namely the Pirate Party. Two eurosceptic Left-Green Movement MPs, Jón Bjarnason and Atli Gíslason, also decided to defect and form the new Rainbow Movement in March 2013. The box below shows the distribution of seats in the incumbent parliament on 28 March 2013, the last working day of the parliament's term.

Retiring MPs

The following MPs decided not to run for re-election:
There are 6 constituencies in Iceland. According to the Law on Parliamentary Elections , each constituency is allocated 9 seats decided by proportional voting, with 9 special leveling seats adjusting the result so that proportionality is maintained according to the overall number of votes received by a party at the national level. The number of constituency seats will, however, be adjusted ahead of the next election, if the number of residents with suffrage per available seat in the constituency increases to more than twice as many as in the last election, when comparing the constituency with the highest number against the one with the lowest. In that case a constituency seat will be reassigned from the constituency with the lowest number to the one with the highest, until the rule is met. However, the total number of seats may never fall to less than six in any constituency. The box below shows the number of seats available in each constituency at the 2013 parliamentary election.
ConstituencyConstituency seatsLeveling seatsTotal seats
Reykjavik Constituency North9211
Reykjavik Constituency South9211
Southwest Constituency11213
Northwest Constituency718
Northeast Constituency9110
South Constituency9110
Total54963

Method for apportionment of constituency seats

The available constituency seats are first distributed to each party according to the D'Hondt method, so that proportional representation is ensured within each of the constituencies. The next step is to apportion these party distributed seats to the candidates within the party having the highest "vote score", after counting both direct candidate votes and their share of party votes in the constituency. In Iceland the "candidate vote system" is that, for each constituency, each party provides a pre-ranked list of candidates beneath each party name, but where the voters voting for the party can alter this pre-ranked order by renumbering the individual candidates and/or crossing out those candidates they do not like, so that such candidates will not get a share of the voter's "personal vote" for the party.
As a restriction on the possibility of re-ranking candidates, it is however only possible to alter the first several candidates on the list. The borderline for alterations is drawn for the first three candidates if the party only win one of the total seats in the constituency, or if more than one seat is won the borderline shall be drawn at the pre-ranked number equal to two times the total number of seats being won by the party in the constituency. So if a party has won two seats in a constituency, then the voter is only allowed to re-rank the top four ranked candidates on the list, with any rank altering by voters below this line simply being ignored when subsequently calculating the candidate vote shares within each party. Final calculation of the candidate vote shares is always done according to the Borda method, where all candidates above the previously described borderline in the ranking are granted voting fraction values according to the voters noted rank. If the number of considered candidates consist of four, then the first ranked candidate is assigned a value of 1, the next one get the value 0.75, followed likewise by 0.50 and 0.25 respectively for the two last candidates. If the number of considered candidates instead had been six, then the first ranked candidate in a similar way would be assigned a value of 1, with the following five candidates receiving respectively 5/6, 4/6, 3/6, 2/6 and 1/6. As mentioned above, crossed out names will always be allocated a 0.00 value. The accumulated total score of the candidates voting fractions, will be used in determining which candidates receive the seats won by their party. Note that candidate vote scores are not directly comparable to candidates from other parties, as how many seats are being won in a constituency by a particular party will effect how their candidates receive voting fractions

Method for apportionment of leveling seats

After the initial apportionment of constituency seats, all the parties that exceed the election threshold of 5% nationally will also qualify to potentially be granted the extra leveling seats, which seek to adjust the result towards seat proportionality at the national level.
The calculation procedure for the distribution of leveling seats is, first, for each party having exceeded the national threshold of 5%, to calculate the ratio of its total number of votes at the national level divided by the sum of one extra seat added to the number of seats the party have so far won. The first leveling seat will go to the party with the highest ratio of votes per seat. The same calculation process is then repeated, until all 9 leveling seats have been allocated to specific parties. A party's "votes per seat" ratio will change during this calculation process, after each additional leveling seat being won. The second and final step is for each party being granted a leveling seat to pin point, across all constituencies, which of its runner-up candidates should then win this additional seat. This selection is made by first identifying the constituency having the strongest "relative constituency vote shares for this additional seat of the party", which is decided by another proportional calculation, where the "relative vote share for the party list in each constituency", is divided with the sum of "one extra seat added to the number of already won constituency seats by the party list in the constituency". When this strongest constituency has been identified, the leveling seat will be automatically granted to the highest placed unelected runner-up candidate on the party list in this constituency, who among the remaining candidates have the highest personal vote score.
The above described method is used for apportionment of all the party allocated leveling seats. Note that when selecting which of a party's constituencies shall receive its apportioned leveling seat, this identification may only happen in exactly the same numerical order as the leveling seats were calculated at the party level. This is important because the number of available leveling seats are limited per constituency, meaning that the last calculated leveling seats in all circumstances can never be granted to candidates who belong to constituencies where the available leveling seats already were granted to other parties.

Participating parties

The final deadline for parties to apply for participation in the parliamentary election was 9 April 2013. To be approved for a list letter to participate in the election, new parties were required to submit a minimum of 300 signatures from supporters in each constituency where they intended to list. The participating parties also needed to submit a valid candidate list to the election committee in each of the constituencies where they intended to run, comprising twice as many candidate names as the number of available seats in the constituency, before 12 April. On 16 April the National Election Committee published its list of 15 approved parties with 72 candidate lists, as 11 parties had opted to run in all six constituencies, while 2 parties opted only to run in two constituencies, and the final 2 parties were only present in one constituency.
;Parties with a list for all constituencies
;Parties with a list for only some constituencies
Despite of having a current member presence in the incumbent parliament, the party Solidarity decided not to run for election. Likewise these recently established parties also decided not to participate: Optimism Party, Christian Political Movement, and Liberal Democrats.
While all applying party lists by the end of the day were getting approved, it was clear that all those who had applied for running the election as single independent candidates were disapproved. According to the Icelandic constitution and election law, independent candidates are not allowed to run in parliamentary elections, unless they manage to join forces with other independent candidates to establish a full complete candidate list for a new group named "independent candidates" in the constituency they intend to run. Last time Iceland had a list of "independent candidates" approved to participate was back in the 2003 elections, where "Independents from the South constituency " was approved as a local list in the South constituency.

European Union accession negotiations

On 14 January 2013, the two governing parties of Iceland, the Social Democratic Alliance and Left-Green Movement, announced that because it was no longer possible to complete EU accession negotiations before the parliamentary elections, they had decided to slow down the process and that the 6 remaining unopened chapters would not be opened until after the election. However, negotiations would continue for the 16 chapters already opened. The new party Bright Future supports the completion of negotiations, while two opposition parties, Independence Party and Progressive Party, argue that negotiations should be completely stopped. In February 2013, the national congress of both the Independence Party and Progressive Party reconfirmed their policy that further membership negotiations with the EU should be stopped and not resumed unless they are first approved by a national referendum, while the national congresses of the Social Democratic Alliance, Bright Future and Left-Green Movement reiterated their support for the completion of EU accession negotiations.
On 19 March 2013, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, an Independence Party MP, put forward a motion in the Althing calling for a referendum asking the Icelandic public whether EU accession negotiations should continue. She proposed that the referendum be held during the upcoming parliamentary election in April if possible, or else during local elections in the spring of 2014. In response to Þorgerður and other proponents of EU integration within the Independence Party, Bjarni Benediktsson, the leader of the party, reiterated the party's policy of stopping negotiations with the EU, but promised to hold a referendum on continuing the negotiations in the first half of their term if they form government.

Campaign

The list below gives a short summary of significant events in the electoral campaign of each participating party.
InstituteRelease dateCVSTLÞABDGOthers
2009 resultn/a21.7%29.8%n/an/an/an/a14.8%23.7%n/a2.8%
–13.7%21.8%3.4%–––15.4%36.1%–9.5%
21.3%8.0%12.3%1.7%––6.1%12.5%35.0%0.9%1.2%
11.3%12.0%18.7%2.7%––4.3%13.0%33.3%–4.7%
9.1%11.3%18.3%2.6%––4.3%13.2%37.3%–3.9%
8.9%11.2%17.5%1.9%––4.7%13.0%38.2%–4.6%
6.0%8.6%14.8%2.1%––7.2%14.6%42.6%2.3%0.9%
4.5%13.2%14.6%2.1%––8.1%14.5%39.0%–3.9%
6.9%11.5%18.7%5.4%––5.6%12.5%37.0%–2.4%
3.1%14.1%17.7%2.6%––7.6%12.8%38.5%–3.6%
5.1%9.2%13.6%2.7%––5.3%15.8%43.7%–3.9%
5.6%10.4%17.7%5.4%––4.0%12.9%39.3%–4.6%
4.4%13.3%16.4%3.1%––4.6%17.5%36.4%–4.3%
4.7%11.9%18.8%4.3%––4.3%12.7%38.2%3.6%1.6%
2.5%11.4%16.9%3.9%––4.1%17.0%38.5%–5.7%
2.7%12.2%21.0%4.1%––5.2%12.4%36.9%3.1%2.5%
3.0%13.3%20.7%3.7%––4.5%13.8%36.0%3.0%2.0%
1.7%12.9%19.3%1.4%––5.9%13.3%40.6%–4.8%
1.0%15.8%17.7%2.6%––6.8%17.0%34.9%–4.1%
2.4%12.4%19.4%3.6%––4.9%14.2%37.1%4.4%1.7%
3.1%13.9%21.2%2.1%––8.8%11.2%35.3%2.1%1.9%
1.9%11.7%22.1%3.8%––6.9%12.1%36.2%3.8%1.7%
2.3%11.3%18.6%2.4%––10.8%12.0%37.7%3.1%1.8%
1.7%10.6%22.5%3.8%––8.1%12.7%35.9%3.3%1.7%
1.9%11.2%17.4%3.1%––11.5%13.6%37.4%2.0%2.0%
1.3%9.1%19.1%3.0%–2.5%12.3%13.1%36.3%2.6%0.4%
0.6%7.3%19.2%1.9%–1.0%14.4%11.9%40.7%1.9%1.0%
Plúsinn1.0%5.0%19.9%2.0%–1.0%14.1%12.5%40.6%3.0%0.1%
1.4%8.6%17.3%2.2%––17.6%14.8%34.5%2.0%1.5%
1.0%7.9%15.6%2.1%–2.1%18.6%14.2%35.5%2.5%0.4%
–11.4%11.9%1.5%–0.9%16.4%20.8%32.0%4.3%0.2%
Plúsinn3.0%5.7%14.4%2.0%–2.0%14.0%18.4%32.7%6.0%1.0%
0.7%8.6%16.2%0.9%––17.8%19.5%33.0%1.8%1.4%
–9.5%12.8%2.2%–2.4%15.3%23.8%28.5%2.5%3.0%
–7.4%15.4%1.3%–2.3%16.2%22.1%29.7%3.2%–
–11.8%12.8%2.0%2.6%1.5%8.7%26.1%29.0%2.6%2.3%
Félagsvísindastofnun HÍ–9.9%16.1%0.9%3.7%1.8%12.0%22.4%29.4%2.3%1.4%
–9.6%12.4%1.9%–3.6%15.2%25.9%27.2%2.1%2.0%
–8.9%14.0%0.7%3.3%3.8%13.2%25.5%26.8%2.8%1.0%
–7.1%13.8%1.6%1.4%1.8%9.1%31.9%27.6%2.4%2.0%
Félagsvísindastofnun HÍ–8.0%12.8%1.4%2.6%3.3%11.4%28.5%26.1%2.1%3.0%
–8.7%12.5%1.7%1.7%3.9%12.0%29.5%24.4%2.5%3.2%
–8.5%15.0%1.5%3.1%4.4%12.7%28.3%22.4%2.1%2.0%
–5.6%9.5%0.6%2.8%5.6%8.3%40.0%17.8%3.5%5.0%
–8.1%12.7%1.9%3.6%7.8%9.2%30.2%21.2%2.2%3.0%
–8.8%12.6%1.4%3.0%5.6%10.9%30.9%18.9%2.7%5.2%
–7.3%12.2%2.5%3.8%6.8%10.1%29.4%21.9%–6.0%
–6.7%10.4%3.6%3.0%9.0%9.5%32.7%22.9%1.0%1.4%
–7.9%13.7%3.0%1.7%5.6%6.5%30.3%26.9%0.8%3.6%
–8.1%13.5%3.6%2.2%6.7%8.3%25.6%27.5%1.7%2.6%
–8.8%15.2%3.0%2.6%8.4%8.0%26.7%24.1%1.2%2.0%
–9.3%12.2%3.0%3.3%6.3%7.4%28.1%24.4%1.6%4.4%
–10.4%13.3%2.4%2.6%6.3%8.1%25.9%23.8%2.5%4.7%
–10.8%13.6%3.2%2.6%6.4%7.3%24.4%24.8%2.8%4.1%
–11.6%13.0%2.9%3.5%7.5%7.7%22.4%26.7%1.3%3.4%
–10.9%14.7%3.0%2.0%6.3%7.6%25.4%22.9%2.4%4.8%
–10.0%14.6%2.6%2.8%6.1%6.6%24.7%27.9%2.6%2.1%

;Notes:
The centre-right Independence party was one of the election's winners with 26.7% of the votes, regaining their position as Iceland's largest party. Two new parties entered the Althing for the first time. The green liberal Bright Future got 8.3% of the votes and The Pirate Party got 5.1% of the votes, just above the 5% threshold for leveling mandates.
Following the election, a coalition government was formed between the Progressive Party and Independence Party with Progressive Party's Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson as prime minister. The Progressive Party received four ministries, and the Independence Party received five.

Turnout

The 81.4% turn-out was the lowest in any general election since Iceland's independence from Denmark.
By 20, 9 April 582 people had voted using early voting. This represented an increase of approximately 1,400 votes over the number of early votes cast in the 2009 election. By 26 April, 24,850 people had voted. Prior to the election, it was not clear whether this meant that turnout would be increased or just that early voting had become more popular.

Elected MPs

Government
Opposition