Turnout: 77.20%
About this election
The parliamentary election of 13 September 2021 produced a decisive shift to the left. The Labour Party won 26.25% and 48 seats, and together with the Centre Party (13.50%, 28 seats) and the Socialist Left (7.64%, 13 seats) the red-green bloc commanded a clear Storting majority. The Conservatives fell to 20.35% and 36 seats and the Progress Party to 11.61% and 21. The Red Party broke through to 4.72% and 8 seats, and the regional list Patient Focus won a single seat in Finnmark. Turnout was 77.2%.
The Storting's 169 members are elected for a fixed four-year term by party-list proportional representation (modified Sainte-Laguë) across 19 constituencies, with 150 constituency seats plus 19 levelling seats allocated to parties above the 4% national threshold. The levelling seats are what allow smaller parties such as the Greens, the Liberals and Red to win representation roughly in line with their national vote.
The campaign was dominated by climate policy and the future of Norway's oil and gas industry — the source of much of the country's wealth but increasingly in tension with its climate commitments — and by rising inequality. SV, Red and the Greens pulled the agenda leftward and toward faster decarbonisation, making the management of the petroleum sector a central dividing line.
A defining force was the Centre Party's surge, built on a rural revolt against the centralisation of public services and the deeply unpopular 2020 regional reform that had merged counties and municipalities. The party promised to reverse much of it, channelling a "periphery strikes back" mood that had already reshaped the 2019 local elections.
Labour leader Jonas Gahr Støre became prime minister, forming a minority coalition with the Centre Party that relied on the Socialist Left for support in the Storting. The SV chose to back the government from outside rather than join it, giving the arrangement a degree of fragility from the start.
Turnout was 77.2%, in the usual high range for Norwegian parliamentary elections and only marginally below the 2017 figure, underlining the consistent engagement of Norwegian voters in national contests.
The election ended eight years of Conservative-led government and returned the centre-left to power, while confirming the Centre Party as a major force and pushing climate and the oil question to the centre of national debate. It also showed the continuing fragmentation of the party system on both flanks.
In 2017 Erna Solberg's non-socialist bloc had been re-elected; by 2021 voter fatigue after eight years of Conservative-led government, together with the Centre Party's rural surge, ended her tenure and handed power to the red-green parties.
Norwegian Election Directorate (Valgdirektoratet) — valgresultat.no.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.