Iceland Parliamentary Elections 25 Sept 2021

[flateyri]

The Icelandic elections are approaching fast.

Difficult to find good information on the main topics relevant in that election. Does membership of the EU still play a role?

I do understand a 9th party might reach parliament and is polling seats: Icelandic Socialist Party.

[Estrella]

Something to keep in mind about Iceland is that it's a country of 300,000 people. Accordingly, its politics works more like that of a, say, city council. A few thousand votes can make the difference between a great and a bad result. Parties do have ideologies, yes, but under the right circumstances any party can go into coalition with almost any other party. Personalities also matter a great deal, certainly helped by the fact that many Icelandic politicians are quite the characters.

Anyway, the current Alþingi looks like this:
Prime Minister: Katrín Jakobsdóttir (Left-Green)
Government (33) Independence 16, Left-Green 9, Progressive 8
Opposition (30) Centre 9, Social Democratic 8, Pirate 7, Reform 4, People's 2

It's very hard to do proper polling in such a small country, but what the polls seem to show is that Left-Greens and Centre will lose a couple seats, Reform and Pirates will gain a couple seats and Socialists will enter for the first time.


D / Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn / Independence Party
The natural party of government, having held of position of Prime Minister for 54 out of 65 years between independence in 1944 and the catastrophic financial crisis that upended Icelandic politics in 2009. Its (now significantly reduced) support base consists of the country's economic elites, middle class and (less so these days) conservative rural working class people who moved to Reykjavík in droves after WW2. Ideologically liberal in the broadest sense of the word, ranging from ideology-free populists to standard centre-right liberals to conservatives to libertarians. Euroskeptic, but it's not like it matters - Icelandic accession to EU is dead as the dodo.

V / Vinstrihreyfingin-grænt framboð / Left-Green Movement
Descendant of the old People's Alliance, the Cold War era very-left-wing-but-not-quite-communist-but-Yankee-go-home party that battled for control of the left with Social Democrats. Despite all the left-left posturing, these days they're basically an ordinary social democratic party with a focus on green and socially progressive policies, plus a personal vehicle for extremely personally popular Katrín Jakobsdóttir. Still does okay among trade union members, but it's not their main base of support.

S / Samfylkingin / Social Democratic Alliance
Originated as a project to unite the Icelandic left, but ended up being a de factor successor of the aforementioned Social Democrats. Essentially the same thing as Left-Greens, except for 1) being pro-EU rather than Euroskeptic, 2) having a more white-collar middle class base rather than LG's artsy types and such, 3) being led by a guy no one's heard of with charisma of wallpaper paste.

B / Framsóknarflokkurinn / Progress Party
A part of the family of Nordic agrarian parties, albeit with less ideology and more blatant pork-barreling. It's not unreasonable to imagine them as Fianna Fáil to Independence as Fine Gael. Ocassionally in coalition with the left, but most of the time little more than IP's sidekick, until 2013. That year, under the leadership of a certain Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, they won 24% on an objectively hilarious promise to write off 20% of all mortgages, financed by taking money from foreign creditors. That went about as well as you could expect.

M / Miðflokkurinn / Centre Party
In 2016, the aforementioned Sigmundur Davíð turned out to be a bit of a crook the most fantastically corrupt politician in Scandinavian history. He was forced to resign in disgrace. The next year, he created a new party to do what he knows best (besides corruption, I mean) - tour the country making off the wall insane promises about fluffy unicorns for everyone while behaving like an alcoholic bumpkin in spite of being a city slicker millionaire. Much like a certain former US President, come to think about it.

P / Píratar / Pirates
Pirates originated as a part of that weird international wave of Pirate success in 2012, and barely managed to enter Alþingi a year later thanks to generic protest vote. As the financial crisis waned, they found themselves directionless, but suddenly got another boost: people did not take the news of Sigmundur Davíð's curious financial activities well, not at all. It wasn't just him who was implicated in Panama Papers, though - a large part of Iceland's political elites were involved, and anger at the system ran so high that for a while, Pirates were polling at 40-50%. They ended up winning much more, er, reasonable results in 2016 and 2017 (15% and 9%) and since then have been floundering, unsure of where to go. They have a very eclectic electorate, but seem to be an especially appealing protest option for young, working class men - the sort of people who would likely vote for far-right in other countries. Thanks Pirates, I guess?

F / Flokkur fólksins / People's Party
Usually I'd advise you to be careful with international comparisions of parties, but this is basically a knockoff Five Star Movement. I mean, look at them: 1) very populist and non-ideological, 2) an incoherent but broadly left-leaning economic policy, 3) feel-good moderately progressive policies on most social issues, 4) Euroskeptic and anti-immigration, 5) led by a charismatic visionary/demagogic lunatic.

C / Viðreisn / Reform
A splinter of the pro-European faction of Independence Party. Lib Dem-esque moderate heroes, that's all there's to them, really. Mostly get the votes of liberal urban middle class who think that IP is too crooked and everyone else is crazy.

J / Icelandic Socialist Party
New kids on the block that Flateyri mentioned, presumably gaining votes from people who think LG in government is too moderate, plus some generic protest vote. Not even that radical ideologically, though that may be because they don't offer anything except vague platitudes about just society or whatever. Their leader is some sort of entrepreneur and according to politicus' ever-helpful posts on AAD (thanks a lot!), an ex-libertarian and kinda sus in general. Also the former leader of Pirates is running on their list.

[Conservatopia]

Something fascinating about Iceland is that nobody technically has a surname.  Therefore in news reports etc the PM is generally referred to as simply "Katrin".

The current leader of Independence is the second of his name to lead the party.

[CumbrianLefty]

Whatever happened to that Best Party that was briefly a thing?

[Estrella]

Whatever happened to that Best Party that was briefly a thing?

Best Party was only a short-lived municipal party in Reykjavík. Mayor Jón Gnarr and other Best Party people then created a national version called Bright Future. BF was supposed to be some sort of progressive liberal protest party, but it didn't really have a clear orientation and was torn between becoming more like Pirates or more like Reform. It finally went with the latter and entered the Bjarni Benediktsson government, which they left almost immediately after it emerged that Bjarni's dad asked him to expunge the criminal record of a convicted child sex offender. They failed to win any seats in the election that followed and now seem to be basically dead.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Gnarr is now a member of the Social Democrats.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Something fascinating about Iceland is that nobody technically has a surname.  Therefore in news reports etc the PM is generally referred to as simply "Katrin".

The current leader of Independence is the second of his name to lead the party.

Some of the older middle class families do have surnames, usually Danish in origin. But increasingly the younger members of those families don't use them and just use patronymics instead.

[Conservatopia]

Something fascinating about Iceland is that nobody technically has a surname.  Therefore in news reports etc the PM is generally referred to as simply "Katrin".

The current leader of Independence is the second of his name to lead the party.

Some of the older middle class families do have surnames, usually Danish in origin. But increasingly the younger members of those families don't use them and just use patronymics instead.

Interesting.  Why is that?  I would have thought with the internet the younger generations would have been more inclined to follow the rest of the world.

[flateyri]

Thanks Estrella for the very detailed reply. I could not find that much English language information on the election, so your information was welcome.

Interesting to see that Economic Crisis crooks still have quite some support.

Some questions:
* If Katrín Jakobsdóttir is so popular, why is her party dropping in the polls?
* Is there any political manouvering going on already or any cracks in the coalition? What options are there if the coalition doesn't reach majority.
* Which parties are pro EU membership (even though the option is dead), do I understand only Social Democrats, Reform and maybe Pirates?
* How found out this interesting "alphabet system" giving parties letters they dont even have in their name.
* Will there not be anymore parties than the 9 discussed? Are the official lists already announced?
* If clearly not Europe, what are the main topics in the election?

It's very hard to do proper polling in such a small country, but what the polls seem to show is that Left-Greens and Centre will lose a couple seats, Reform and Pirates will gain a couple seats and Socialists will enter for the first time.

[PSOL]

The Socialist Party seems to be composed of not only disaffected college-educated working class voters, but of immigrants as well. I’ve noticed on their website there to be Polish surnames especially.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Something fascinating about Iceland is that nobody technically has a surname.  Therefore in news reports etc the PM is generally referred to as simply "Katrin".

The current leader of Independence is the second of his name to lead the party.

Some of the older middle class families do have surnames, usually Danish in origin. But increasingly the younger members of those families don't use them and just use patronymics instead.

Interesting.  Why is that?  I would have thought with the internet the younger generations would have been more inclined to follow the rest of the world.

They'd been going out of fashion for a couple of generations before the internet anyway*, mostly for nationalist reasons.

But Icelanders may almost all speak fluent English, but they're fiercely particularist. Doing something that nobody else does, especially when it doesn't have any negative effect on their quality of life (it's a small enough society that you don't need to know somebody's surname to practice nepotism) very much appeals to the average Icelander.

*For example, Katrín Jakobsdóttir's maternal grandfather was the politician Sigurður Thoroddsen, but his son is Dagur Sigurðarson, not Dagur Thoroddsen.

[Estrella]

Thanks Estrella for the very detailed reply. I could not find that much English language information on the election, so your information was welcome.

Thanks!

Some questions:
* If Katrín Jakobsdóttir is so popular, why is her party dropping in the polls?

Hard to say, but she was always significantly more popular than her party, and they aren't doing that badly. They're only 3-4% down from their previous result in most polls.

* Which parties are pro EU membership (even though the option is dead), do I understand only Social Democrats, Reform and maybe Pirates?

Social Democrats and Reform are pro-EU, as was Bright Future when it was relevant. Pirates have a wishy-washy compromise position with some conditions. All other parties are varying degrees of Euroskeptic.

* How found out this interesting "alphabet system" giving parties letters they dont even have in their name.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I assume this is one of those things that has no reason for it besides "it's always been done this way". Denmark and Israel have similar systems too, and those don't tend to make much sense either.

* Is there any political manouvering going on already or any cracks in the coalition? What options are there if the coalition doesn't reach majority.
* Will there not be anymore parties than the 9 discussed? Are the official lists already announced?
* If clearly not Europe, what are the main topics in the election?

Not sure if I can answer these. As you said, information about Icelandic politics is pretty hard to find, and news even more so than general information about parties or whatever. But this election seems to be a reversion to the mean after a very dramatic decade - debates about Europe, constitutional reform, a deep financial crisis, a deluge of corruption scandals, all those things have become less important. Reimposition of pandemic restrictions seems to be a fairly important issue, especially since tourism is a huge industry in Iceland. Independence is strongly opposed to this and has clashed with Left-Greens on this issue.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Please sir, may we have an update?

[Estrella]

Please sir, may we have an update?

Unfortunately I don't have a lot to tell you I know only about three things:
1. The rise of Socialists aside (up to 8% now), polls aren't very different from last election's results
2. There's a single-issue antivaxxer party contesting, probably (hopefully) going nowhere
3. It's actually fairly likely that the incumbent coalition will continue - no-one involved is exactly happy about it, but Independence and Progress see it as the best chance to keep out pro-EU Socdems and Reform, and for Left-Greens it's the path of least resistance - as polls stand now, they'd need to ally with Socdems, Pirates and Reform for a progressive coalition, and that still might not be enough. _{thanks to politicus for this again}

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Their leader is some sort of entrepreneur and according to politicus' ever-helpful posts on AAD (thanks a lot!), an ex-libertarian and kinda sus in general.

Can you tell something more about that leader?

[Estrella]

Their leader is some sort of entrepreneur and according to politicus' ever-helpful posts on AAD (thanks a lot!), an ex-libertarian and kinda sus in general.

Can you tell something more about that leader?

I don't know much more about him than that, but he took part in founding several large newspapers and owning parts of them, plus his business operations tended to go bankrupt a lot. He's almost like a miniature Rupert Murdoch, and someone like that leading a socialist party is... well, sus.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Sounds more like the other British media tycoon with the initials R.M...

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Any news on this front? Or still plodding along?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Any news on this front? Or still plodding along?

Just looking at the polls, D and V seem to have dipped slightly this month, while S, B and F are all up a little. But I've no idea why.

[Diouf]

So this is today.

Polling opens at 9.00 local time (11.00 CET) and closes 22.00 (24.00 CET).

19.3% of eligible voters, 49 371 persons, have already voted. Up from 15.7% in 2017.

Places to follow the election can be https://www.ruv.is/ and https://www.mbl.is/frettir/

[mileslunn]

After closing, do they have exit polls?

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Here we go…

[Diouf]

After closing, do they have exit polls?

Well, it doesn't seem like it. Polls have just closed, but no numbers shown

[Estrella]

The 2016 election was the first international vote I watched, and I vaguely remember a really cute thing where what I assume were polling station clerks telephoned the results live to the RÚV studio. And they're doing it again, yay!

Anyway, People's Party and Progress up, Centre and Left-Greens down a lot, others not much change.

[Diouf]

Already numbers in from the Northwestern constituency. It only seems to be 5 932 votes, so I'm guessing it's the early vote.



D 24,1%
B 23,3%
V 11,1%
S 8,7%
C 6,7%
P 6,2%
M 5,8%
J 3,9%