Turnout: 64.40%
About this election
The municipal elections of 9 September 2019 saw the Labour Party remain the largest party nationally with 24.78% and roughly 2,579 councillors, but it was a historically poor result — down some eight points on 2015 — while the Centre Party surged to 14.40% and about 2,266 council seats. The Greens and the Socialist Left advanced in the cities, and a single-issue anti-toll-road movement won protest votes in several urban areas. The Conservatives slipped to 20.08% and the Progress Party to 8.23%. Turnout rose to 64.4%, the highest in a Norwegian local election since 1991.
Councillors for each municipality are elected by party-list proportional representation (modified Sainte-Laguë) for a four-year term; voters can give personal and cumulative votes to candidates, and council size depends on population. Long-term foreign residents may vote, one of the distinctive features of Norwegian local democracy.
The election was widely summed up as a rural revolt. The Centre Party rode fierce opposition to the centralisation of public services, to the forced merger of municipalities and counties under the 2020 regional reform, and to rising road tolls. Its surge to over 14% nationally — and far more in seats — made it the defining story and a clear mid-term rebuke to Erna Solberg's centre-right government.
A striking feature was the breakthrough of single-issue anti-toll-road lists (bompenger protests) in several cities, which won significant protest votes against the spread of urban road tolls. Their success illustrated a broader anti-establishment, cost-of-living current running through the campaign.
While the Centre Party dominated the rural story, the Greens and the Socialist Left made gains in the largest cities, where climate and urban issues resonated. The result thus deepened the urban-rural divide, with different protest movements pulling in different directions in town and country.
Turnout of 64.4% was the highest in a Norwegian local election since 1991, an unusually strong figure that reflected how mobilising the merger, toll-road and centralisation grievances had become.
The 2019 result foreshadowed the Centre Party's role in the 2021 national election, when it entered government, and confirmed that the backlash against the regional reform had become one of the most powerful forces in Norwegian politics.
The municipal vote was held on the same day as the county-council election, and the pair are best read side by side. This map colours each municipality by its leading party and rewards local, place-based strength: single-issue anti-toll-road lists and independents that never register at national level can top the poll in individual towns. The county map for the same day looks different again, because the county tier excludes Oslo and gives more weight to rural regions where the Centre Party surged. Comparing the two shows the split screen of Norwegian local politics in 2019 — Greens and the Socialist Left advancing in the big cities on this map, the Centre Party's periphery revolt dominating the county one.
Norwegian Election Directorate (Valgdirektoratet) — valgresultat.no.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.