The China Mail - Social Democrats overtake PM's party in Iceland vote

With all ballots counted, the Social Democratic Alliance led by Kristrun Frostadottir was first with 20.8 percent of the vote.

This meant the party secured 15 seats in Iceland's 63-seat parliament and more than doubled the support it saw in the last election in 2021, when it obtained 9.9 percent.

"I'm extremely proud of all the work that we've done. We obviously see that people want to see changes in the political landscape," Frostadottir told AFP as results started coming in late Saturday.

Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson's Independence Party trailed the Social Democrats with 19.4 percent, down from the 24.4 percent it won in 2021, marking the worst result the party had ever recorded.

In third place was the Liberal Reform Party with 15.8 percent.

Benediktsson's three-party, left-right coalition resigned in October, almost a year before the deadline to hold parliamentary elections.

The coalition of the Independence Party, the Left-Green Movement and the centre-right Progressive Party collapsed over the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers.

The Left-Green Movement also saw its support crumble and got only 2.3 percent of the vote, falling below the five percent cutoff to enter parliament.

The Progressive Party also lost voter support, getting only 7.8 percent, down from 17.3 percent in 2021.

Few Icelandic parties have left power unscathed since the 2008 financial crisis that ravaged Iceland's over-indebted banks.

"In the last 15 years, voters in Iceland have been extremely critical of their governments and voted against the government in all elections except one," Olafur Hardarson, professor of political science at the University of Iceland, told AFP.

The exception was Katrin Jakobsdottir of the Left-Green Movement, who retained her post as prime minister in the last election.

Benediktsson took over as premier in April 2024 after Jakobsdottir resigned to run for the presidency, which she failed to win.

- Coalition culture? -

In a country battling inflation and high interest rates where around 268,000 people are eligible to vote, the economy, housing and healthcare have been foremost on voters' minds.

Despite causing the demise of the government, immigration was not a galvanising issue among voters in a country where one in five residents is foreign-born.

"It is very prominent in the public debate amongst politicians. But still it does not seem to be an issue that people are putting at the front of their list of important issues," Eirikur Bergmann, a politics professor at Bifrost University, told AFP in English.

According to a Gallup poll published in early November, only 32 percent of respondents listed immigration as a key issue and just 18 percent included asylum issues.

By contrast, healthcare, economic issues and housing were top concerns for more than 60 percent.

In Iceland, there is not a "culture" of minority governments, Bergmann said, meaning that parties would now begin negotiations to try to form a majority government via a coalition.

According to Hardarson, one likely coalition would be the Social Democratic Alliance and the Liberal Reform Party -- along with one or two others -- as their policies are relatively close.

But he noted: "This is difficult to predict because in Iceland the coalition game is relatively open."

W.Tam--ThChM