Turnout: 79.18%
About this election
Iceland's parliamentary (Althing) election of 29 October 2016 was a snap vote brought forward by the Panama Papers scandal, which in April 2016 had forced Progressive prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson from office amid the largest protests in the country's history. The centre-right Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn) finished first with 29.00% of the vote and 21 of the 63 seats, but the night's story was the surge of the anti-establishment Pirate Party to 14.48% and 10 seats — a threefold gain — level with the Left-Green Movement, also on 10. The Progressive Party collapsed from 19 seats to 8, while the brand-new liberal, pro-European Viðreisn (Reform) entered parliament with 10.48% and 7 seats. Turnout was 79.18%.
The 63 members of the Althing are elected for a four-year term by open-list proportional representation in six multi-member constituencies. Fifty-four seats are allocated within the constituencies by the D'Hondt method; the remaining nine are nationwide "levelling" (adjustment) seats awarded to parties that clear a 5% national threshold, so that the overall composition of parliament mirrors the national vote. Voters may mark preferential votes for individual candidates on the list they choose. The system consistently produces multi-party parliaments and coalition governments.
Icelandic politics has no stable two-bloc structure. The Independence Party has been the dominant force of the centre-right for most of the republic's history, usually governing in coalition with the agrarian-centrist Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkurinn). To their left sit the Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin) and the Left-Green Movement (Vinstri græn), with the Pirates and, from 2016, Viðreisn and Bright Future occupying the liberal and protest space. Governments are assembled from shifting combinations rather than fixed left and right camps.
The election was dominated by the fallout from the Panama Papers, which had exposed the offshore holdings of leading politicians and fuelled deep public distrust of the political establishment. The Pirates, campaigning on transparency, direct democracy and constitutional reform, led several opinion polls during the campaign, raising the prospect of Europe's first "pirate" government. Anger at the traditional parties — and at the still-raw memory of the 2008 banking collapse — set the tone.
In the end the establishment held on better than the polls had suggested. The Independence Party recovered to first place, the Pirates fell short of their poll highs, and the fragmentation of the vote across seven parliamentary parties made government formation extraordinarily difficult. Neither the outgoing Independence–Progressive coalition nor the centre-left opposition had a majority, leaving the new party Viðreisn as potential kingmaker.
What followed was one of the longest government-formation processes in Icelandic history. Successive mandates to the Independence Party, the Left-Greens and the Pirates all failed. Only on 11 January 2017 — more than ten weeks after the vote — did Independence leader Bjarni Benediktsson form a wafer-thin three-party coalition with Viðreisn and Bright Future, commanding just 32 of the 63 seats.
Turnout of 79.18% was, at the time, the lowest in the history of the Icelandic republic — a notable fact given the intensity of the campaign, and a sign of the disillusionment that the Panama Papers had bred. It nonetheless remained very high by international standards.
In 2013 the Progressive and Independence parties had swept back to power on promises of household debt relief after the crash. By 2016 that coalition had been shattered by scandal, and the fragmentation of 2016 set the pattern of instability that would trigger another snap election within a year.
The Independence Party topped the poll in all six constituencies, but the map revealed the familiar regional textures of Icelandic politics. The party was strongest in the affluent Southwest — the "Kraginn" suburbs ringing Reykjavík — where it took almost 34%, and in the rural South. The Pirates and the new Viðreisn drew their best support in the two Reykjavík constituencies and the urban Southwest, confirming the anti-establishment and liberal vote as an overwhelmingly metropolitan phenomenon. The Progressive Party, by contrast, retained real strength only in the rural Northwest, Northeast and South, where it ran a strong second — a reminder of its agrarian base even in a year when its national vote collapsed.
The seven parties that entered the Althing spanned an unusually wide range. Beyond the Independence Party's dominance of the right, the Left-Green Movement consolidated the environmentalist left, the Pirates channelled post-crash disillusionment, and the Progressives clung on despite the loss of their leader to scandal. Viðreisn's arrival — a pro-European, economically liberal breakaway from the Independence Party — and Bright Future's continued presence gave the centre a crowded, fragmented look that would make any stable coalition hard to assemble, as the drawn-out talks that followed would prove.
Figures from Statistics Iceland (Hagstofa Íslands) and the National Electoral Commission (landskjörstjórn). Constituency map: largest party by constituency (Reykjavík North and South shown combined).
The centre-right Independence Party finished first with 29.0% and 21 of the 63 seats, but no bloc had a majority. After a ten-week deadlock, Bjarni Benediktsson formed a three-party coalition of the Independence Party, Viðreisn and Bright Future in January 2017.
The Panama Papers leak in April 2016 exposed the offshore holdings of leading politicians and forced Progressive prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson to resign amid mass protests, prompting an early election.
The Pirate Party surged to 14.5% and 10 seats — tripling its representation and tying the Left-Green Movement — though it fell short of the poll highs that had suggested it could lead a government.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.