Talk Elections

Taking place April 27th.

A Gallup poll on April 1st shows:

Progressive Party (anti-EU liberals) 28.3%
Independence Party (formerly dominant conservatives) 22.4%
Social Democratic Alliance (incumbent centre-left) 15%
Bright Future (ideologically vague party with two incumbents, a former Social Democrat and a former Progressive, as well as links to the joke-y Best Party) 12.7%
Green-Left Movement (left-wing junior partner in the current coalition, came close to coming in second last time) 8.5%
Pirate Party 4.4%
Democracy Watch (breakaway from Dawn, see below) 3.1%
Right-Green Movement (low tax greens) 2.1
Dawn (Vague anti-establishment populists who did moderately well in the last election under the name Citizens' Movement) 1.5%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_parliamentary_election,_2013

Anti-EU sentiment seems to be the main thing helping the Progressives (who only recently switched to an anti-position).

I also suspect this is another case of the people in power being unfairly blamed for not magically fixing the economy.

I'm unsure exactly what the Progressive Party's current ideology is. They had previously been firmly on the center-right, acting as the junior partner to the Independence Party for more than a decade. Then again, they flipped on the EU, they may have flipped on more. Wikipedia says they got a party switcher from the Green-Left. As a social democrat, I'm not optimistic though.

OMG, what happened to the SDA? They basically pulled this country out of the mess!

Also, why is EU membership even an issue while the country isn't in the EU?

The Social Democrats advocacy of EU membership is sort of a 90s holdover policy.

When they got into power, they started acting on it, almost out of habit since it had been part of their platform for so long.

Anyway, it's since because clear that that was NOT why they were elected and the Social Democrats have de-emphasized it. Still, a lot of people were apparently angry that they wasted any time at all on it.

Yeah, that's stupid. Anyone who wants to seek EU admission now would be a fool politically.

It's pretty sad, regardless, that the SDA is polling so poorly after basically completely saving Iceland from the awful mess they were in, without resorting to any neoliberal nonsense along the way. Unpopularity of the EU or not, Iceland has been the most dramatic turnaround and it seems preposterous to me that they wouldn't get any credit for it. Good Lord.

Indeed. It's a rare example of the Left staying true to its value and, in the process, being extremely successful. This is truly depressing.

Basically this + Iceland is a centre-right country without any tradition for SD governments. Last time was an exception and now that the country is stabilished many Icelandic voters are going back to "normal", apart from the ones voting on protest parties.
I had imagined more young voters would stick with the left, but they are probably the ones going to the populists. 

By "normal", you mean the policies that led to the financial debacle, I guess?

Yeah, you could say that. Politics is rarely fair.

Lawyer Bjarni Benediktson took over the Independence Parti chairmanship in 2009 and he managed to distance himself from the past and the party was polling at 36% in 2012. The massive shift from 2012 to now is from the Independence Party to the Progress Party (the old farmers party) and thats likely the EU question.

EDIT: By "normal" I was mostly refering to a general feeling of being more comfortable with the right. Rural and small town Iceland (which is basically everywhere outside Reykjavik) is a pretty conservative place.

Yeah, I get your point. It's just that it makes me sick.

politicus, what do you know about the Progressives current political orientation?

Regarding the Progress Party and EU they were against until January 2009 when they changed to being supportive, but with strong caveats, especially regarding agriculture and fishing. Since that proved unsuccesful (to say the least..) they recently switched back to being quite strongly opposed to EU membership again and apparantly that has made them more attractive to people otherwise voting for the euro-sceptic Independence Party.

One other thing about Icelandic politics is that 10% of the adult population are members of the Independence Party, so its very much a peoples party. Among fishermen, urban middle class, and in a lot of urban working class families as well, this is simply the natural party of government. The old national party, that led them to independence etc. Its a lot stronger than any right wing party in mainland Scandinavia, so it isnt that strange that they have bounced back.

I'm also guessing that it hasn't helped the SDP to push for unpopular statist policies such as out-lawing porn either. ::)

Rescuing the economy from near complete collapse within a few years and practically no austerity is a bit more important and meaningful in terms of impact than restricting porn.

Yes exactly. Which is probably why people are even more annoyed about it. Enforceing a statist social policy was not something the voters wanted the government to do. 

Its 21,7% for various populists. Thats a pretty high number. My guess is that this group is primarily young voters, while older right wingers voting for the left in 2009 are returning to the parties they used to vote for.

It would be interesting to see some actual poling that included distribution on age.

It's also worth noting that 15% is an increase from the last numbers I saw for the SDP, so I'm sure that as the month pogress they will gain a bit, as most goverment parties do right before an election.

Has the Green-Left participation in the government (Steingrimur and Katrin if I recall well ?) been any good, bad, neutral, audible, inaudible ? I guess they are also back to what they cuold count on before the "Revolution" back in 2009.

It's obviously a bit disappointing as they've done an objectively good job in government, but no Icelandic government is likely to be anything other than comically unpopular for the next few decades. They'll probably bounce back and win the next election or something.

Left-Green got >20% in '09 and are polling around 8% now, so negative obviously.

Polling badly doesn't necessarily mean their performance in government has been bad, it's all subjective.

Whoops, completely misread the question. I thought he was asking if their participation in government was positive for them. :P

I see that I had Iceland a bit idealized. It's a "normal" country after all. If "normalization" leads to another disaster, call the lefties. Even if they are awful persons with some state control views, willing to ban porn.

Don't take me too seriously. Sometimes I don't understand politics.

I wouldn't dream of taking seriously anyone who always does. It's a clear mark of a derelict character.

I don't take things always seriously, though maybe I'm derelict.

A new poll shows that the Progress Party might get an outright majority. A single party majority would be something completly new in Iceland. Given that Iceland has a 5% threshold a number of votes will be lost and 42% might be enough for an outright majority. Maybe even less if the Left-Greens and/or Pirates drop below 5%, they are both at 5,7 in this one.

The poll was carried out by television channel Stöð 2 and daily Fréttablaðið and published last night.

"The Progressive Party, chaired by Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, is on a roll with 40.8 percent support heading towards the election in three weeks time, on April 27. In the last election, in 2009, the Progressive Party got 14.8 percent of the votes.
 
According to the results, the party will secure 31 seats, out of a total 63, one fewer than is needed to gain a clear majority. If the party’s popularity will continue to surge, it might obtain a clear majority in parliament and not have to forge a coalition with another party or parties.
 
The right-wing opposition Independence Party has the second highest level of support with 18.1 percent. In the last election, the party received 23.7 percent, its lowest score ever, and it was the first time in the history of the Republic that it was not the largest party in Alþingi.

The Social Democratic Alliance currently has a 9.7 percent support rating, down 20 by percent from 29.8 percent in the 2009 election.
 
The other party in the coalition government, the Left Green Movement, holds 5.7 percent support, down from 21.7 percent in 2009 and not far above the 5 percent minimum to earn a seat in parliament.

According to the poll, two new parties will get their members elected, Bright Future with 8.5 percent, and the Pirate Party with 5.7 percent. Six other parties were included in the poll and received ratings of between 0.4 and 2.9 percent".
 

Progress Party 40,8
Independence Party 18,1
SDA 9,7
Bright Future 8,5
Pirates 5,7
Left-Greens 5,7

Modified my sentence to make the meaning clearer. As you do not always understand politics, it is okay to take you seriously. Those who always understand politics are of derelict character.

Okay, I'm officially un-loving political Iceland as of now... 15% for a left-wing coalition who, if not perfect, basically saved their asses without selling them to banks, that's very lacking gratitude... And this sudden and massive Progressive surge doesn't stick with the cliché of calm and level-headed Nordics...

However, looking at the other polls, this particular one could well be an outlier.

It could, things are really volatile up there right now.

Its a bit of a myth that Iceland didnt pay anything to the banks, they actually repaid more per capita than any other country except Ireland. Ordinary Icelanders are heavily in debt and there has been a transfer of wealth from the general population to banks, pension funds and capital owners. It could have been much worse, but many people believed the left could create a just solution without transferring wealth to the rich and are dissapointed. There has als been massive cuts on health care and again many believed the left could "save the welfare state". And then all the EU membership nonsense.

Many of the pro-EU, business friendly right wingers left the Progress Party in 2011, so its back to being a social liberal centrist party closer to its rural roots, so its not such a massive right wing turn as it may appear on paper.

The Independence Party tried to relaunch themselves as a Christian party in March wanting to base their policies on "traditional Christian values", this was blocked by their youth movement, but apparently it backfired and I think it may be a reason the Progress Party is on a roll right now.
Besides having a youngish (late 30s) and energetic leader.

Ok you cleared it for me. I was not saying they didn't repay anything to the banks by the way, just that they didn't sell the whole country to them as they are doing in Greece. Iceland's been better off than Greece, and that's probably thanks to this government among other factors.

But I figure that really this election is a return to a more traditional repartition of the electorate, about two thirds right wing and one third left-wing.

If people really are mad at the Social Democrats for not being left-wing enough, I'm surprised they aren't giving the Green-Left a shot. After all, they almost came in second last time.

Ah, OK. Thanks, Lewis. For sure I make more unclear sentences, cause my little English command doesn't work always.


The first paragraph of your post explains things clearly enough, in short. As for the Progressive Party, apart from being a centrist party, apparently is a populist one, isn't it? Do you have a personal opinion of the Progressive Party's leadership or some thoughts about the hypothetical skills of Prog politicians at the head of a government?

Well, Green Left were also in the government that wasn't left-wing enough...

How about developping some genuinely leftwing alternative.

A few notes on the background for the dramatic changes in Icelandic politics:

The EFTA ruling in the Icesave case January 28 was a major blow to the government.  
Iceland was acquitted of all charges and since the government wanted to negotiate with the British and the Dutch it made them look stupid, while the Progress Party's risky strategy of going to court proved to be the right one.

Also PP is going populist. The Progress Party has promised to write off up to 20% of all price-indexed household mortgages, which would cost over 12% of Iceland's GDP!

The Progress Party wants to negotiate with the foreign claim holders of the defaulted banks and get them to pay for this write down against being allowed to move the money they have left outside of the Icelandic economy. At the moment the claim holders can not get their assets out because of capital controls. If the claim holders do not comply the Progress Party say they will simply tax them mercilessly to get the money.
 
A lot of economists say that this is probably not feasible. Prominent Icelandic economist Gauti Eggertsson, who is associate professor at Brown University, has described it as "sheer populism".

They fear that even if it was possible for the government to get 1.3 billion Euro from the claim holders, and either give it to households so that they can repay 20% of their mortgages or give it to the banks directly, the banks in Iceland would all of the sudden sit on piles of cash. Which could lead to either another housing bubble or hyperinflation.
 
But the "get tough" attitude against foreign creditors is popular, especially among young people.
 
Apart from The Icesave case, many people are angry that the new constitution did not get passed this term, so it could be voted on at the election.
This isn't a fair critique of the government since the Independence Party has used the Icelandic version of the filibuster to stall the constitutional bill by giving long speeches, but it seems that voters also blame the government for not pushing this through.

Apart from the "christian values" thing, The Independence Party is unpopular because they have proposed a flat income tax, which obviously would benefit the wealthy, and because their leader Benediktsson seen as untrustworthy, he was on the board of a company that had to be bailed out.
He was initially quite successful, but now his luck has definitely turned.
His family is ultra-establishment in Iceland and apparently this combined with the fact that he has taken the party too far to the right has been problematic.
Given that 10% of the population are party members polling at 17,8% is really extremely low and a disaster for the IP if it becomes the result, since the 23,x% result last time was already an all time low for them. So its not just the left that is in trouble, the right is doing badly as well.  

PP has always had an element of rural populism and been known as a pragmatic and unideological party. The rural/urban division is strong in Iceland since Reykjavik dominates the otherwise thinly populated country so much. The traditional core of PP were farmers + some fishermen with small boats from small ports (fishermen on big boats from big "urban" ports are IP core voters).
As the rural population declined they started adopting liberalism to attract urban voters. The old Liberal Party merged with the Conservatives to form IP in 1929, which became a nationalist Conservative party, so Liberalism was a vacant position. But like most Liberals they were split between social liberals and more classical liberals and the latter only dominated in the financial boom era.

I don't know if the present PP will be any good at governing, a number of young and/or inexperienced people would likely be part of their government.

If they don't get a majority, there is also the question of who they will align with. I doubt PP and IP will form a coalition, since PP is currently controlled by its left wing and IP by its right wing. 
A prominent IP politician has also just warned Icelanders against "another left government under the PP".
Bright Future is their most likely partner, since it is centrist, but it is a mixed back with both  former SDAs, PPs and people from the joke Best Party, maybe they will be unwilling to accept government responsibility. This leaves PP with the option of trying to gain support from the ex-government. 

In early 2009, the PP, with the same leader it has now, offered to form a government with the Social Democrats and the Green-Left. The Social Democrats turned them down though because they knew they could win an election on their own. So there's that.

Yes, this might influence their decision.

In The Reykjavik Grapewine pundit Kari Tulinius gives the following description of PP and IP leaders and ideology (or lack of ideology). It is probably fairly accurate. All though I dont know where she got the idea that PPs traditional ideology was "agrarian socialism" from.

"Considering how unpopular Republicans are among Icelanders, it has been a bit weird seeing the Independence Party identifying with the American right-wing. Recently its youth wing released an ad calling for an offensive against socialism, featuring—alongside pictures of Icelandic and European political leaders—President Obama. Which has to be the most incongruous political poster since someone put a picture of Bert the Muppet on a pro-Osama Bin Laden poster. To further the ideological link-up, the chairperson of the party, Bjarni Benediktsson, went to this year's Republican National Conference, along with Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir, the party whip. In the political sense of the term, sadly.

Surely they have nothing to learn from a political campaign designed to make charisma-free Mitt Romney seem interesting?

Funny you should say that, because the Independence Party has its own Romney in Bjarni Benediktsson. Like the Republican, he was born wealthy, has a shady business reputation which is offset somewhat by the perfectness of his hair, and has been forced to change his opinions to suit party hardliners. That said, he has nothing like the Bond villain-type riches of Romney. His personal wealth has been estimated at about a hundred million krónur, or just shy of one million dollars, though he stands to inherit a lot more. That still makes him plenty rich by Icelandic standards, and one of the five richest sitting MPs.

Let me guess, the wealthiest politician is some namby-pamby champagne socialist 
progressive politician.

The wealthiest MP, ten times richer than his nearest colleague, is the chairperson of the Progressive Party, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. His wealth has been estimated at well over eleven hundred million krónur, or a little less than ten million dollars. Which is weird considering that until fairly recently the ideology of the party he leads was agrarian socialism. However, in recent years the Progressive Party has been a party searching for an ideology like a two year old kid looking for Waldo, getting bored after five seconds and running to the nearest adult to ask them to change their diaper because they did a doo doo, which is sort of how they ended up with Sigmundur Davíð as chair".

SDGs wealth is inherited as his dad was a prominent businessman who among other things were chairman of Icelandair. His own resume prior to being an MP is fairly elitist by Icelandic standards, but without any real administrative or managerial experience:

BS degree of Business and Economics at the University of Iceland + part-time studies in Mass Communication.

Exchange student at Plekhanov University in Moscow and studied international relations and public administration at the University of Copenhagen.

DPhil in economics and political science at Oxford University, with a focus on connectivity and economic development planning.

Worked as a journalist and reporter on RUV 2000-2007.
 
Member of Reykjavik City Council 2008-2010.

Wow, the IP is even more pathetic that I thought. I hope they stay at this level of support (or fall even more, if that's possible).

No less than 14 parties are running in this election. Most of them don't stand a chance, but I will try to give a short description of the lesser known, since we have already covered the "Big 4" and the Pirate Party is basically just the same as all the other Pirates around Europe.
The deadline for getting on the ballot is not until 9/4, so the number of parties might get even higher.

Left wing

The Peoples Front of Iceland

Hard left party (mostly Communist). Strongly anti-EU and Euro.

Wants to socialize the infrastructure and the financial sector, which should be run "for the benefit of society".

Better conditions for immigrants and refugees

The Rainbow

Breakaway group from the Left Greens. Very strongly anti-EU, pro "a society driven by sustainability". Wants better welfare, human rights and nature conservation.

The Humanist Party

Wants to "prioritize human beings before money". The economy should be at the service of the people.

All bankrupt companies should be converted into workers cooperatives. Pro interest free banks.

Against "the European Union of Banks" and the Euro. Wants a stop to private banks issuing money.

Natural resources should be under the control of the state. Pro a reduction in economic growth (hardly a popular position during a major crisis...).

Dawn

Sympathizes with the international 99% movement.

Pro abolishing price indexing on household loans and wants a cap on interest rates. No official view of the EU and the Euro as they "want the people to decide". "Strongly pro the new constitution".

The amount of party splitting on the Icelandic left wing is simply ridiculous.


As you can see, they have plenty of those.


Liberals

Bright Future

Describes their ideology as "Liberalism with a twist", the twist being environmentalism.

Pro-EU and the Euro, wants to create more industrial variety and a more efficient labour market.
Pro the new constitution.

Libertarians

Right Green Peoples Party

Libertarian environmentalists (a very Icelandic combo...), wants to create a new currency, the riksdalur, which should be pegged to the US dollar to prevent the destabilizing effect of the enormous amount of off shore kronar.

Wants a 20% flat income tax, pro smaller government but wants to preserve the core of the welfare state through increased efficiency (the strange idea that you can keep welfare with much lower taxes just by cutting bureaucracy is a pet idea among Scandinavian libertarians making them rather untrustworthy), wants to create an Icelandic equivalent of TARP and reduce index linked housing loans to November 2007 levels. Wants to combat "the vulture funds strangling hold on the Icelandic banking system", not sure how.

Others

The Household Party

Breakaway group of moderates/populists from IP. Started at April 1, so the Icelandic media first thought the party was a joke.

Aims to free Icelanders from debt slavery, but are rather vague on how they going to do it, wants to revoke the banks license to print money and are pro increased banking regulation, wants  lower taxes but based on Keynesian arguments, pro resource extraction (seems to be slightly anti-green).

The Republicans which was a splinter group of moderate Conservatives/trade union Conservatives from IP is one of the groups behind the party.

Iceland Democratic Party or Democracy Watch

Mainly a single issue party created as a protest against IPs attempts to stall the new constitution, which 67% of Icelanders said they wanted implemented in a 2012 referendum. Mostly people who havent previously been involved in politics, but also some moderate Conservatives who are fed up with the present IP leadership.

Regarding EU they want to finish the negotiations and "let the people decide", pro increased use of referendums.

Anti-establishment, consider the privatisation of the banks 1998-2003 to be a corrupt "Russian style takeover" orchestrated by political fat cats.  

A couple of historical things I forgot which may be helpful in understanding the current situation.

- The Icelandic trade union movemet was (and to some extent still is) split between Communists/Socialists (from 1956 connected to the Peoples Alliance - now split between many parties), Social Democrats and the IP. The existence of Conservative trade unionists were because of the importance of the Keflavik military base question and NATO-membership as a political cleavage in Iceland, with many workers being pro-American/NATO and anti-communist.
IP seems to be losing parts of this group with their present right wing turn, but then again they where polling in the mid 30s a couple of months ago. It may just be temporary.

- The welfare state in Iceland was never at mainland Scandinavian level, its more comparable to pre-Thatcher Britain with the national health care traditionally being seen as the centerpiece of the welfare system.

- Icelandic SD has at times (mid 80s-mid 90s) had economic policies to the right of PP. Parts of the party were also inspired by New Labour and there is still a strong "Blairite" fraction in the SDA. The strong position of the right wing was the main reason why the Left Greens dropped out of the Alliance.

Fixed.

PPs answers to a recent quistionaire in the Reykjavik Grapewine online magazine. It confirms my impression that their campaign is fairly left wing (by PP standards) and is not aiming at a coalition with IP. Several of their proposals will be totally unacceptable for the right wing in IP. Its also relatively friendly towards the government.  

Notice the talk about cooperatives. IP also denies there are any problems with gender inequality in Iceland and this is fairly feminist (by centre-right standards).

3. Is there a foreign sister party that you identify with, one that international readers might identify with?

The Progressive Party has multiple sister parties, among them the centre parties in the other Nordic countries and the Democratic Party in United States of America.

4.    What do you consider the most important issue facing Iceland today? How about the most important issue to consider in this election?

The Progressive Party considers job creation, the removal of indexation on consumer loans and correction of consumer loans that have grown abnormally (because of the financial collapse and the indexation) to be the main focus both in the election and for the next four years to come.

5.    What do you admire about the current coalition government and what it accomplished in the last four years? What do you dislike? What will you do better?

The current coalition government formed by the Social Democratic Alliance and Left Green Movement have passed measures encouraging the unemployed to go to school. The next step is to motivate the creation of new private sector jobs. The Progressive Party intends to take the much-needed next step to encourage that as well as removing the laws about indexation.

6. Was the financial crisis in 2008 and the problems Iceland now faces in some way caused by government policy and action or the lack thereof? Is your party in some way responsible for this? Why or why not?

As the current Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir said after Icesave verdict was delivered, now is not the time to look for someone to blame. However, deregulation in the years preceding the crash went a step too far and it would have been sensible to enact laws and regulation prohibiting the banks from overextending their lending.

7. Specifically, how do you plan to bring Iceland back to economic prosperity?

The Progressive Party believes that a balanced system of cooperative firms, private firms and the public sector will provide the best results for Icelandic prosperity.

In the last four years, there have been about 200 changes to the tax system. The Icelandic economy has to be stable, transparent and trustworthy to create an environment where initiative, hard work and social justice are the primary objective.

For that to happen the tax system needs to be relatively simple to approach and competitive. Trust in government also needs to be high to allow for the creation of long term plans of both individuals and companies.

8. Do you want to weaken, strengthen or keep unchanged the regulation of the financial industry and other business activity in Iceland?

Creating the right environment for small and medium sized companies to flourish is most important as they employ the largest number of people. The Progressive Party will look to that statement in setting its regulation agenda.

9. Do you plan to increase or decrease the total tax burden in Iceland?

In the last four years there have been about 200 changes to the tax system. The Icelandic economy has to be stable, transparent and trustworthy to create an environment where initiative, hard work and social justice are the primary objective.

For that to be a reality the tax system needs to be relatively simple to approach and competitive. The Progressive Party believes in a tax burden that reflects the standard of healthcare and other public services we´d like to see. But first and foremost there needs to be private and cooperative employment to increase tax revenue.

10. Do you believe in the Icelandic króna? Or will you work to adopt an alternative currency? If so, which one?

If in government, we will work to establish the króna again as a valued currency as it is our currency for the foreseeable future.

11. Do you support the newly passed law removing an expiration date from Iceland’s capital controls? Will your party work to lift these controls? Does it have a timeframe in mind?

Lifting capital controls is important to Iceland’s economic health, but it must be done cautiously so that there won’t be an outpouring of currency. As the Progressive Party considers the króna the currency for the foreseeable future, the timeframe is sooner rather than later.

12. Do you believe that the collapse was more than an economic one? If so, what else failed in 2008 and does it still need fixing?

There was a failure of institutions as described in the SIC report and was dealt with in part by a parliamentarian conclusion. That work is ongoing.

13. How can the government best serve Icelandic homes?

Give the nation the tools to succeed; Iceland is rich with resources, resources that should enable all Icelanders to be fairly well off.

14. What is your stance on Iceland’s application to the European Union? Do you ultimately think Icelanders' interests would be best served by being part of this coalition?

Icelanders' interests would be best served by staying out of the EU.

15. What is your stance on the new constitution that was called for in the wake of Iceland’s financial crisis? Are you for or against pushing the current draft through parliament? Why or why not?

We think that the constitution should be revised and want it to be finished by the end of next term, but it has to be done soundly and in agreement with the majority of the nation. It should not be forced through parliament. The current draft should be used as a template for a revised constitution.

16. Will your party do something to protect the land and its resources? Is a more stringent regulative framework needed to ensure conservation of the environment?

The Progressive Party believes that it is important to include an article in the constitution that puts resources within Icelandic territory into the national ownership.

17. Is gender equality a problem in Iceland? If so, what does your plan to do to ensure equality?

There are still some issues that need to be dealt with. The Progressive Party would like work against negative gender stereotypes, prepare both genders during their early years to work together in society, secure gender equality in the distribution of public funds and, last but not least, to reach pay equality for women.

18. Where do you stand on immigration issues?

The Progressive Party has historically been a pioneer in terms of immigration issues in Iceland, leading the foundation of alþjóðahús (“intercultural centre”), fjölmenningarhús (“multicultural centre”) and establishing the flóttamannaráð (“refugee council”) during its time in government.

Today, The Progressive Party believes that it is important to enable immigrants to be vital members of Icelandic society and considers knowledge of the local language key to doing this.

19. Does your party harbour any ideas about the role of religion in governance?

The Progressive Party sees Christian values as the foundation of Icelandic culture and supports the national church as it is set in the current law.

20. Are there any parties that your party will not work with in a coalition government? Why?

No. The Progressive Party Chairman Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson has said that he and the party are willing to form a government with the party/parties that support the Progressive Parties ideas about job creation, the removal of indexation on consumer loans and correction on consumer loans that have grown abnormally (because of the financial collapse and the indexation).

IPs responses to the same questions.

http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/Sjalfstaedisflokkurinn-The-Independence-Party-Interviewed (http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/Sjalfstaedisflokkurinn-The-Independence-Party-Interviewed)

Yeah, that doesn't strike me as very IP friendly.

New poll from MMR (8/4). Probably more realistic than the last one, and slightly less catastrophic for the government. Six parties above the threshold.

EDIT: Another one from Félagsvísindastofnun (10/4) - in the second row - its a little worse for IP and Pirates and more votes for the small leftist parties and brighter for Bright Future.
 
Left-Green Movement 8.1% 8.8% (6)
Social Democratic Alliance 12.7% 12.6%  (9)
Bright Future 9,2% 10.9% (7)
Pirates 7.8% 5.6% (4)
PP 30.2% 30.9% (24)
IP 21.2% 18.9% (13)

Dawn 1.9% 1.4%  
Democracy Watch 3.6% 3.0%
Right Green Movement 2.2% 2.7%
Households Party 1,0% 1,9%
Other 2.0% 3,3%


About the MMR poll

Most of the wasted votes are on the left wing, so there is room for improvement for the Left Greens if left wingers decide not to waste their votes. Maybe DW makes it in the end.
Its about 15% left wingers and DW + Dawn would be in if they hadnt split.
Right Greens look lost after it was discovered their leader doesnt pay income tax in Iceland.

The poll has PP + Bright Future at 39,4% and the rest at 49,8%, 10,7% are wasted votes.

Looks like PP will have to form a minority government with support of SDA (and perhaps Bright Future) if this is the result. Their problem is that both SDA and BF are pro-EU.
          

One element that explains part of the leftist governments decline in the polls is the media situation in Iceland.

Its largest media corporation by far is 365 Miðlar which is 90% owned by Ingibjörg Pálmadóttir, the wife of London based businessman Jon Asgeir Johannesson, the richest "financial viking" from the boom era. Its well known that Jon Asgeir has been using his influence to change stories about himself (see http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Jon-Asgeir-Pressures-365-Journalists (http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Jon-Asgeir-Pressures-365-Journalists)), but he has also used it against politicians he perceives as "unfriendly to investors" (read leftists) .
 
The second large private media corporation in Iceland is the one centered around Morgunbladid, which used to be the only daily in Iceland and has strong ties to IP. Its dominant shareholder is Gudbjorg Matthiasdottir, who is on the Top 5 of the richest persons in Iceland. She owns a large fishing enterprise and a lot of valuable fishing quota. Editor in chief is no other than Mr. David Oddson, ex IP prime minister (1991-2004), chairman of the board of governors of the central bank (2005-2009), and generally viewed as more responsible for the banking crash than any other politician in Iceland. All though Morgunbladid is nominally independent conservative this translates as Independence Party conservative and the paper is highly biased against the government.

Its of course not uncommon that rich right wingers own the media, but in a small country like Iceland the effect becomes stronger.

Basically your bog-standard Murdoch type oligarch then?

Oligarchs for sure since Iceland has a small and closely knit economic elite, but not Murdoch style as they didn't make their money in the media business and its not even their main business area (unless you consider Jon Asgeir's wife an independent operator), but there is significant owner influence on editorial policies, much stronger than its usual in Scandinavian countries where such practices are generally frowned upon.

One more reason the government of Iceland is unpopular: Failing to pass the constitution that should replace the old one, which is just an amended version of the 1874 constitution from the Danish era (revised a bit in 1920 after independence and with the presidency clauses added in 1944).

The new constitution needed to be passed by two consecutive parliaments, but the government cut a deal with PP and IP deciding that it can be passed if the next parliament approves it with a 2/3 majority and 40% of the population approves it in a referendum. These terms makes it almost impossible to get the bill ratified since it abolishes the disproportional representation of rural constituencies (a bulwark against total Reykjavik domination), a change many rural MPs obviously do not like.

The process:

A. A National Assembly was convened comprising 950 individuals selected at random from the national registry. Every Icelander 18 years or older had an equal chance of being selected to a seat in the assembly.

B. From a roaster of 522 candidates from all walks of life, 25 representatives were elected by the nation to a Constitutional Assembly to draft a new constitution reflecting the popular will as expressed by the National Assembly.

C. The Supreme Court (with 8 of its 9 justices having been appointed by the Independence Party) annulled the Constitutional Assembly election!

D. Parliament appointed the 25 candidates who got the most votes to a Constitutional Council which in 2011 drafted and unanimously passed a new constitution.
The main new elements were:

- Electoral reform securing full proportionality by making Iceland one constituency.
- National ownership of natural resources - including the sea and the underground.
- Direct democracy through national referenda - if 10%  of the electorate demands it.
- Freedom of information.
- Environmental protection.
- Checks and balances.
 
E. Various politicians then started to undermine the bill for various reasons.

- Not liking the idea that the National Assembly and the Constitutional Council  intrudes on their turf.
- Rural MPs worried about their reelection prospects. (mainly PP)
- Fearing that national referenda might be undermining their power. (some SDA and PP, IP)
- Fearing exposure of their dirty deals under a freedom of information act. (mainly SDA, PP and IP)
- The fishing lobby that wants to preserve the privileged and very profitable access to the  fishing grounds for owners of big vessels. Since Big Fishing is one of the main donors in Icelandic politics this is crucial. (mainly IP)

F. In a national referendum on the bill on 20 October 2012 where 67% of the electorate supported the bill. National ownership of natural resources got 83% support, direct democracy 73%, and electoral reform 67%.

G. After an e-mail campaign organized by ordinary citizens 32 out of 63 members of parliament declared their support for the bill and wanted to vote on it.

H. The president of the parliament then decided to postpone the vote (this decision might have been illegal).

I. A majority of the MPs then put the bill on ice and furthermore decided to require a 2/3 majority for any constitutional change in the next Parliament + a majority representing min. 40% of the population approving in a referendum.

In her farewell address outgoing Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir called this decision "the saddest day of my 35 years in parliament" but her government originally had 34 seats in Parliament and many voters feel she could have pushed the constitution through if she had been more forcefull and had acted tougher against reluctant members of her own party - it was mainly rural SPAs joining the opposition that prevented the bill from passing.

The left should have passed a Media Pluralism Act of some kind when they had the opportunity.

What would that entail?

Fairness guidelines, plus if necessary splitting the biggest media corporations and forcing them to sell part of their facilities to smaller companies.

And what of free speech?

There is no free speech currently. You have speech in media if you agree with the bosses of those medias.

Freedom of speech, like any freedom, is not and can never be absolute.

They have a national broadcaster, RUV, with the usual public service requirements and a four times a week independent tabloid, DV, so its a matter of domination and strong influence not exclusion of all other voices in the public debate.

In discussions like these you should also remember that usually the journalists are quite significanlty more left-winged than the population as a whole, which of course also has an influence on the bias of the media corporations. 80 % of the Danish journalists, 77 % of the Swedish journalists and 57 % of Norwegian journalists votes for left-wing parties, so it would be suprising if something similar was not the case in Iceland.

But the difference is that in mainland Scandinavia owner influence on editorial policies is rare. This is different in Iceland giving less influence to editors and journalists - at least regarding some types of stories.

Also Jon Asgeir Johanneson is a self made "the rules doesn't apply to me" empire builder, who is convicted twice for economic crimes and is facing a prison sentence of up to 6 years if he is convicted in his current trial. He is more a media owner of the Berlusconi ilk than comparable to your average Scandinavian publicist.

As a consequence of his first conviction (3 months suspended for dodgy book keeping) in 2007 he was barred from running a business in Iceland for three years, thats why his wife got the media interests.

He just got 12 months suspended and a fine for tax evasion, but he is facing much more serious charges at the moment.

http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Tycoon-Jon-Asgeir-Johannesson-Guilty-Of-Tax-Evasion (http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Tycoon-Jon-Asgeir-Johannesson-Guilty-Of-Tax-Evasion)

"Further legal battles await Jón Ásgeir in relation to his involvement as the largest shareholder in failed bank Glitnir. He stands accused of improperly influencing the bank regarding a loan of 1.2 billion GBP granted to Baugur just prior to the financial collapse. For this charge prosecutors are seeking six years imprisonment".

Its als worth considering that as chairman of the board for 365 Miðlar Ingibjörg Pálmadóttir has a more direct involvement in the running of the business than most Scandinavian media owners and that Jon Asgeir Johannesson has recently been hired as development manager in 365 Miðlar.

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The lovely couple... Hope he is going to do some actual jail time after his next conviction, but I wouldn't bet on it.

IP seems desperate:

"Chairman of the Independence Party Bjarni Benediktsson says he might be stepping down from the upcoming elections, according to an interview last night on RÚV.

The Independence Party’s numbers are down according to the most recent Gallup polls, coming in at just 18.9%. In addition, a recent survey published by Viðskiptablaðið shows that the party’s popularity would increase with Vice Chairwoman and former mayor of Reykjavík Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir as leader. Incidentally, Bjarni’s popularity has risen slightly since revealing that he may step aside, Vísir reports".

Benediktsson will announce his decision either today or tomorrow.

Viðskiptablaðiðs survey asked for public support to individual politicians and whether people would rather vote for the Independence Party if Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir was party chairman. It showed that almost half of those intending to vote for the Progressive Party would vote IP if Hanna Birna K. was chairman of the party. So this might be a game changer.

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HBK is a moderate like Benediktsson, but a lot tougher and centrist voters probably think she can keep the Christian Right types and Libertarians in check. Her middle class background might also be more appealing than blue blood Bjarni B.

This is the first time I have ever heard an opposition leader (or any party leader for that matter) announce in the middle of an election campaign, that he might be stepping down. It’s absurd. Either you step down or you carry on. I can’t honestly see how Benediktsson can backtrack at this point, even if he wants to.

A study of the recent MMR poll has shown that 30 out of 63 seats would go to candidates who have never been in parliament before if the seats where allocated according to it. Lots of rookie MPs and perhaps less clientilism and backroom deals, or at least one can hope so.

These numbers might be a bit misleading however, when it comes to analyzing media bias. Among political journalists (i.e. excluding sports columnists, celebrity journalism, etc.) there is not a left-wing majority. In both Norway and Sweden, political journalists vote, according to some studies as much/more right-wing than left. I haven't seen any numbers for Denmark, but wouldn't be surprised if the same applied there.
 

For a classic example of that phenomenon, look at the Grauniad...

Of course, all this talk of journalists' voting habits ignores the possibility that people can have opinions but still be objective about reporting facts.

I know, I know, I'll shut up now.

In a newspaper?

IP leader Bjarni Benediktsson has decided to stay on as party chairman!

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At a meeting he told a group of party members that:

"I am absolutely convinced that it was right to open this discussion and talk about things just as they are. And under these conditions, the special conditions, which offer nothing a man can hide under. Under these circumstances, I have searched my mind. [...] I have found there is nothing I or the Independence Party can do, but to continue to fight to the end."

(my translation using google translate so it might not be totally correct)

Guests at the meeting were apparantly satisfied with the decision of Bjarni as much applause followed. He said he had an unfailing faith in the partys ability to strengthen its position significantly in the time to come, but only so long as the party and party members stand together "as one man".

The whole thing is really weird to me. Wonder if this stunt really will silence his internal critics? And how will the voters react? Apparantly he hopes they will reward his straight talking honesty, but I doubt it.

HBK was apparantly "annoyed" with the entire discussion. I dont thing she wants to lead IP in a major defeat. Getting the leadership after a defeat will put her in a much stronger position.

No less than 15 parties will be running in the election. 11 nationally, 2 small leftist parties (the Humanists and Peoples Front of Iceland) in the two Reykjavik constituencies and 2 other parties in just one constituency - the Rural Party i NV-Iceland and Sturla Jonsson (named after the party's founder - Icelands most famous truck driver) in Reykjavik South.

()
Sturla Jonsson - Who wouldnt want to vote for this guy?

I made a mistake regarding Democracy Watch. Democracy Watch and the Iceland Democratic Party are two names for the same party, a centrist group in favour of the new constitution with many moderate Conservatives. Most of the founders were in the Constitution Council (see my earlier description of IDP and the constitution post). Its correct that they are a splinter group from Dawn.
 
Also, Dawn still has a couple of social liberals left, so its not a pure left wing party (but mainly leftists).

That fella has the old Liberal Party logo under his picture.

The Liberal Party merging into Dawn struck me as really odd.

I guess I could see some libertarian types joining a vaguely anti-establishment party. Just the name "Liberal Party" though, it suggests establishment much more than it suggests libertarianism.

It was clearly a folksy anti-establishment party in the mold of the Progressive Parties in Denmark and Norway (combining populism, libertarianism and xenophobia). It was mainly a protest movement against the fishing quotas, but also pro civil liberties and against clientilism and the corrupt elite.

Liberalism often means Libertarianism in Scandinavia. Liberal Alliance in Denmark is Libertarian.

The weirdest thing in connection with their participation in Dawn is that the Liberals were also slightly xenophobic. But this never entered Dawns platform.

The Libertarianism of those parties is kind of a faux Libertarianism, since they say they want low taxes and small government, but also support welfare (but only for "normal", hard working people).

Answers to a questionaire in 2009:

The Liberal Party - In Their Own Words

The Liberal Party was originally founded to fight the unjust fishing quota system law that was passed by Alþingi (parliament) in 1991 and the party's objective has always been that Iceland's habitants have a righteous and fair fisheries control, as fisheries are the nations fundamental industry. In the current economic situation, The Liberal Party emphasizes the abolishment of the quota system to fight unemployment.

The Liberal Party also emphasizes the importance of professions that increase the influx and circulation of foreign currency, e.g. tourism, codfish farming, and mussel farming. Furthermore, the Liberal Party places emphasis on those professions that preserve national currency, such as grain farming, vegetable farming and handcraft.

The Liberal Party has always fought for abolishing loan indexation, pointing to the fact that the current system is directing homes into heavy debt. Therefore, The Liberal Party has put forth a bill to Alþingi to limit price-increase compensation to avoid mass bankruptcy of the public.

The Liberal Party believes that the nation, as a whole, has an unconditional right to a complete revaluation of the countries administrational branch and its economy. Cliquishness due to political-ties and nepotism must be rooted out with critical and honest methods.

The Liberal Party is the only party in Parliament that has never been a part of government, and now expects this to change. It is necessary that The Liberal Party's standpoints are a part of the heavy work ahead in our country. The Liberal Party has courage and boldness to tackle the matters that need to be dealt with. The money that has been made away with has to be returned to the nation, regardless of the time and effort needed to make that happen.


Briefly describe the party’s general agenda using one sentence.

The Liberal Party wants a society characterized by equality and justice, where free members of the community are active and responsible participants in society’s development.

How does the party plan to help Icelandic companies?

Fight for lower interest rates and that the banks start giving businesses normal loans again. No business can handle the current cost of capital and unemployment will rise even more if no action is taken.

How does the party plan to help Icelandic homes?

Abolish price indexation and partially write off the publics housing loans by passing a law on temporary accounts for the rest of the year. This way it is possible to determine write offs from actual real estate prices, which have been going down while loans have been going up.


How can Iceland regain trustworthiness in the eyes of foreign investors and creditors? How can Iceland prevent becoming isolated in the global village?

By negotiating contracts with foreign lending institutions regarding joint ownership, of up to 1/3, of the now government owned banks, we need foreign financial resources into our banking system.


What is your party’s stance on the European Union?

National (domestic) resources are a priority for Iceland and therefore Iceland should not join the EU.


Who is responsible for the Icelandic economic collapse and the problems Iceland now faces? Does your party share any of the responsibility?  

The plunderers in the group of so called “investment Vikings” receiving excessive salaries and those political parties in government in the last years. The Liberal Party was not member of government in the last 10 years. The Independence Party led the government and held both the Prime- and Financial Ministries. They wanted free flow financials, and they slept on their guard. Shame on them for their apathy and inaction!


What is your party’s stance on constitutional change? Should we assemble a constitutional parliament, or are there other ways?

We want to change the constitution and we support the bill regarding that. We also support ideas of a constitutional assembly.


It is given that the Icelandic state needs to initiate many cutbacks in the near future. Where should those be imposed, in your opinion, and are there any fields that should be “exempt” from such cutbacks?

Surely, cutbacks will be required when laying out our national budget because the treasury's revenue has decreased by billions after the financial collapse. It is essential to cut back and adjust in all fields, but at the same time, guard the welfare system and ensure good health services, while effectively cutting back. Foreign- and defense affairs should be contracted as much as possible, and we should rely more on police and coast guard as security measures for Icelanders in the future. Military leaning ideas should be put aside in current tribulation. Cutbacks alone are not an option. Creating new jobs with all means possible is essential and thus increases the nations income.

Höskuldur Þórhallsson, one of the most influential Progressive Party MPs, has said that the Progressive Party should be open to working with the left wing. When asked whether they could form a government with the left he said that:

"I think it is a unique opportunity to form a centrist and welfare focused government".
"What makes all the difference to the Progressive Party is working with people who are willing to take the steps which the party has emphasized in its campaign".

Then he backtracks a little:
"But whether it's on the left, the center or to the right, it will only happen after the elections".

Still its the first time a prominent PP politician has implied so openly, that they consider leaving IP out in the cold after a PP win. It makes sense policy wise, but they would be setting IP up for a major comeback in the next election, if they do it.

On the note of Icelandic politics, I just wanted to remind everyone that this video exists and is still hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBW4mPzv6E

Interesting how "we are the best" sounds the same in Icelandic.

Yeah, I guess the video was allright, but like all joke parties/candidates once they get into office and have to be serious they tend to be even more boring than established parties. Now the more serious part of BP have transformed itself into a social liberal greenie, pacifist (in a country without an army... :P) party called Bright Future (almost a parody on the Best Party name), with a campaign theme about how the tone in Icelandic politics should be nicer and more civil and they are even pro-EU. Not that there is anything wrong with that (well, apart from the EU thing...), but its all pretty cafe latte/PC/bourgeois (take your pick).

Rural seats will still be the cheapest in this election which is going to benefit PP. Even with an extra seat to the SW Constituency a seat will cost 4.858 votes around Reykjavik and 2.668 in rural North West Iceland and 2.905 in the PP heartland in the North East (in the hypothetical scenario where everybody votes). A seat in SW will cost 82% more than in the NE, but last time it was 105%, so its an improvement. The urban/rural balance is now 35/28 seats = 60%/40%.

A total of 237 957 Icelanders can vote - around 13 000 of them living abroad.

Suðvesturkjördæmi (South West - basically outer part of the greater Reykjavik area + ex-urbs)
 •2003 - 11 þingmenn: 4.442 voters per seat
 •2007 - 12 þingmenn: 4.549
 •2009 - 12 þingmenn: 4.850
 •2013 - 13 þingmenn: 4.858
 
Norðvesturkjördæmi (North West)
 •2003 - 10 þingmenn: 2.122
 •2007 -   9 þingmenn: 2.347
 •2009 -   9 þingmenn: 2.366
 •2013 -   8 þingmenn: 2.668
 
Reykjavíkurkjördæmi suður (Reykjavik South)
 •2003 - 11 þingmenn: 3.885
 •2007 - 11 þingmenn: 3.945
 •2009 - 11 þingmenn: 3.977
 •2013 - 11 þingmenn: 4.109
 
Reykjavíkurkjördæmi norður: (Reykjavik North)
 •2003 - 11 þingmenn: 3.890
 •2007 - 11 þingmenn: 3.980
 •2009 - 11 þingmenn: 3.980
 •2013 - 11 þingmenn: 4.142
 
Suðurkjördæmi: (South)
 •2003 - 10 þingmenn: 2.837
 •2007 - 10 þingmenn: 3.070
 •2009 - 10 þingmenn: 3.250
 •2013 - 10 þingmenn: 3.364
 
Norðausturkjördæmi: (North East)
 •2003 - 10 þingmenn: 2.732
 •2007 - 10 þingmenn: 2.789
 •2009 - 10 þingmenn: 2.836
 •2013 - 10 þingmenn: 2.905
 
On average a seat costs 3.777 votes if 100% votes, so maybe around 3.000 IRL.

New poll from MMR with increased support for IP after their dip to 18,9% and abysmal support for SDA. Its conducted 11.-14. April, which makes it a bit unreliable since many of the respondents probably thought HBK was going to replace Bjarni Benediktsson as IP leader. The Pirates seems to be getting most of the protest votes again after their recent dip to 5,6%. I put the MMR poll from a week ago in (). Dawn has reeemerged out of the blue and probably taken some votes from the Left Greens.


PP 32.7% (30.2%)

IP 22.9% IP (21.2%)

Pirates 9.0% (7.8%)

Left Greens 6.7% (8.1%)

SDA 10.4% (12.7%)

Bright Future 9.5% (9.2%)

Dawn 3,6% (1.4%)

Democracy Watch 3,0% (3,0%)

Right Greens 1,0% (2,7%)

Households Party 0,6%

Rural Party 0,6%

People Front of Iceland 0,1%

Others 0,1%

Are there leadership debates? If so are there certain leaders that can seek to gain from this?

This extract from an article by Icelandic journalist and development worker Stefan Jon Hafstein is from 2011, but is a good explanation of the basic dynamics in Icelandic politics.

(some of the leftists in here will probably say that this is the way the system is everywhere, but Iceland is, like Greenland, definitely clientilistic to a much greater degree than most of Western Europe)

"I thought for a long time that Iceland with its strong democracy and the newly independent states in Africa and elsewhere were incomparable. But the more stones were rolled over in the aftermath of the crash, and onwards to this day, while more and more disgusting things turned up, the more I thought of the similarities to the African situation.
 
Where do men empty banks? Where are the resources put into the hands of a few people? Where are the state delivered to a gang of "brothers"? Where are foolish contracts signed with foreign multinational corporations? Where was the Cold War used for enrichment of a few chosen ones?"
 
In the article Hafstein compares the family relations in Icelandic society - where men treat the resources of society as loot that chiefs hand out to those who show them loyalty - to African politics.
 
He doubts that the crisis can be attributed to neoliberalism, as is often heard in the debate:
 
"All though this period was characterized by a singleminded Liberalism, which is scary".

"Inequality was on a big increase in Iceland at the time, but it was not based on ideological liberal incentives in their own right".

"Still, three years after the collapse, the Icelandic Left fights Liberalism when they should focus on corruption. For it is the essence of the Icelandic way.

The Icelandic corruption works through the tribal system where political rulers treat resources and other kind of assets as loot which they distribute to those who show loyalty to them".

"It would appear that in our uniform and small nation there are ideal conditions to avoid the distress of many African nations - tribal division (tribalism). According to this tribe comes first, then village, place, relatives and friend groups. Abstract concepts such as "the public", "transparency", "administration" "decentralization" is a sign of a much more mature communities where you have put the regulation of relations in a political, economic, social and cultural framework. But in reality Iceland is much closer to the tribal community. This we see in the behavior of our political parties, with regional providers through the "local syndrome" whose loyalty to the herd comes before ideological conflict or merit. Loyalty is a prerequisite to get the benefits of output.
 
Local princes is clearly characteristic of such systems. Leadership depends on your allocation status (Minister, rural MP, chairman, administrator of grants from the Board of Regional Development or other administrators of agency funds). People need to be clients of the officials and instead of transparency "ships just sail as they please". The Chiefs do not want the public to have rights, but wants them to apply to them personally and have them assigned by grace. Valuables is distributed by Princes who reign by the power of "tribe". The less regulation and transparency, the better for a chiefs power. One of the key aspects of this is that power constraints are blurry and there are almost no penalties, so it is easy to take big risks occasionally. "

"Some progress in Icelandic society have occurred outside of the political system. The history of Iceland is not utter darkness and a number of positive developments have taken place. Take gender equality. Significant progress has been made on the ground in the last 20-30 years, powered by the demands of society and the enthusiasts amongst women. Raising awareness of violence, especially sexual violence, has occurred outside of the traditional administrative or judicial framework.
 
Homosexuals have done remarkable work to change society. On their own terms and on their own. Environmentalists have applied efficient means and been very successful in getting nature on the agenda. Alcoholics and drug patients have achieved remarkable success in improving the community by their organizations and have taught us what it's all about. Likewise, organizations such as Hugarafl and Straightforward. The cultural diversity that exists in Iceland is a good witness to the forces that can be unleashed. All these issues have sprung up out of our community outside the chilly political workshops.
 
These examples, and the work of the Constitutional Council, shows techniques that can be used systematically to open up society. Activate the power of the people. Fix the system so it will be a channel for democratic development. Set constraints for the rulers of the republic. Analyzing power of interests. The big challenge is nothing less than the democratization of Iceland.
 
All this aims to increase prosperity on a broad basis, not just in the form of growth. And greater equality. Balance is economic efficiency."

"The political "revolt from the middle" can isolate extreme hawks aiming to put the country at risk. Such a rebellions objective must be to ensure general prosperity and not give it to those who want to tear apart the peace for their own narrow interests of the moment. This is the democratic way out."

Dunno. Couldnt find anything announced on the RUV webpage.

Katrín Jakobsdóttir from the Left Greens is pretty sharp and the SAP leader is dull, so she might swing some SD voters her way in a debate, I dont know if she can move someone across the aisle. Dont think it can change much between IP and PP, unless IP sends HBK who is a better debater than Bjarni Benediktsson, but I doubt they will do that now.

The Election Commission has decided to remove all independents from the lists since Icelandic election law demands that all lists shall have twice as many candidates as the number of seats in the relevant constituency.
This decision doesn't apply to Sturla Jonsson since he actually has a full party list, despite being the only serious candidate on it.
Independents are obviously not happy about this.

Regarding the whole HBK vs. Bjarni Benediktsson saga:

She challenged him for the leadership at the party conference in 2011 and got 45%, she decided against a retry last year, which she no doubt would have won. Instead some unknown minister ran against Bjarni Benediktsson, but told the delegates to vote HBK even if she wasnt an official candidate. As a result BB got 78%, HBK 18,8 and the minister 1,6%. Pretty humiliating for BB. The poor guy has repeatedly been challenged at party conferences since he took over in 2009 and has often barely survived.
Basically he only became the leader because all the heavy weights were implicated in scandals related to the financial crash. The party right wing supports him to block HBK, but dont really consider him one of their own. 
In this years party primaries Benediktsson only got 54% of the votes in the South West constituency despite facing no serious opposition, which was obviously a humilation, while HBK got 74% in a very strong Reykjavik candidate field. 

He became even more unpopular after his decision to back the governments compromise with the Icesave creditors. It was later refused by voters in a referendum (and Iceland won the case at the EFTA court). BB was mercislessly criticized for this by former PM David Oddson at the normally IP friendly Morgunbladid.

A recent poll showed that 86% of IP voters prefer HBK to Benediktsson. She is especially popular among women, rurals and academcs, which are also the groups IP needs to do well among to have a chance. BB is only favoured among young men 18-25 and people making +250.000 dollars a year - basically the Libertarian/low tax crowd.

Voters see her as the one that can clean up the party and break the culture of nepotism and corruption. She was never personally involved in any of the financial crash-scandals, but while she was mayor of Reykjavik she ignored a pitch black corruption report about the public energy company and left it to her succesor, comedian Jon Gnarr from the Best Party, to clean up the mess, but voters seem not to hold this against her.

The long of the short is that IP has a leader that can be toppled by his deputy whenever she feels like it. Pretty bizarre situation. Benediktssons musings about how he might be stepping down was obviously an attempt to put pressure on his critics and force HBK out in the open, but it made him seem as desperate as he probably is.

Disclaimer: I said that MMR is considered the best pollster. Big mistake based on dated info. The idiots don't include seniors 67+ in their polls! Which mean they officially suck. Therefore "the traditional/responsible Left"=SAP, Left Greens and IP are underperforming in their polls. While Pirates and other protest parties are overpolling. But the difference is probably not as great as one might expect because the other polls show the same pattern.

The basic pattern regarding age is:

Over represented among voters 50+: IP, SPA, Left Greens

Over represented among 30-50: PP, these are the families with children heavily in debt and hoping for at miracle and therefore attracted to the whole "blackmail foreign creditors" scheme.

Over represented among 18-30: Pirates (no surprise there), Right Greens (Libertarians).

Over represented among 18-50 with no significant youth tilt: Bright Future (ex Best Party), Dawn, Democracy Watch.

The sharp divide around 50 is mostly due to the fact that Icelanders over 50 are generally not in debt since they paid out their house loans so they are more attracted to fiscal responsibility.
Also Left Greens are seen as a continuation of the good old Peoples Alliance, Icelands traditional anti-American Left Socialist party that was bigger than the SDs but joined SPA in 1999 (a move that wasn't popular among many older leftists).

Fun fact: With 15 parties, 11 of them having a full list, around 1.500 out of 320.000 Icelanders are running for office. That is almost 0,5% of the population. Roughly equal to 1,5 mio. Americans running for Congress!

If I can read between the lines well, can I infer from your article on corruption comparing Iceland to African states and from the rest of our discussions that nothing's gonna change on that with PP in power ? I feel like they are the plain old agrarian party, and therefore quite connected with the provincial establishments. Is that true, or exactly the opposite ? :)






...and that, ladiesy and gentlemen, was my 1000th post. It's not a very good one actually, but still...

I think that's really hard to tell, but the old guard is unlikely to be back. If they get 30%+ more than half their MPs will be people that has never been in parliament before and their leadership is people in their late 30s.

A lot depends on who they are going to govern together with. There is no tradition for minority governments in Iceland and they are likely going to need partners.
IP/PP would be worst case scenario, because all the old networks would just reemerge, but this is also highly unlikely since PP hopes to replace IP as the dominant centre right party.
I wouldn't like a PP majority government either for the same reasons.
But Icelandic political observers seem to expect them to team up with 1 or 2 parties from the center-left: Bright Future, SDA and Left Greens. Basically the kind of government SDA declined back in 2009. This would be a strong government and one that would be able to change things. Maybe even get the constitution ratified, just without the full proportionality part. EU membership would obviously be off the table with a PP victory, so that shouldn't pose a problem.

Any break with the past must come from the centre-right, or at least include part of the centre-right. Iceland is structurally not a left wing country, and it isn't realistic that a left wing government can emerge, unless under extreme conditions as in 2009.
So basically the best hope is a strong reformer from the centre-right. I would generally trust HBK more than Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson from PP, but he is kind of a tabula rasa. He seems calm, level headed, determined etc., but I think few people know who he really is and how he is going to govern. But an alliance with the centre-left would basically tie him to a reform course.

PPs background is different from IPs because they are strongest in Eastern and Northern Iceland where the land distribution is a lot more equal than in the SW and where there is a strong coop movement (because it was furthest from the merchants and shops in Reykjavik), so local "chiefs" - to use Hafsteins expression - are more community leaders, than IP "chiefs", who are often wealthy, they are obviously still patrons but its still a more democratic tradition. I would also generally say that the problems in rural Iceland is more nepotism and pork barrelling, while corruption is more tied to the Reykjavik elite.

If you want to be negative about SDG his dad made his money in the defence industry which means he needed political patronage. But then again he is not his dad.

Daddy's money came from Kögun. A consulting and software company established by the Foreign Ministry to participate in the construction of the Icelandic air defense system, the IADS-radar system, which was built up by NATO. IADS stands for Iceland Air Defense System. The system was implemented in 1994. Kögun was the subcontractor in charge of the organizing and  maintenance and development of the software for IADS.

The CEO of the company was SDGs father Gunnlaugur Sigmundsson, who had formerly worked in the World Bank. In 1993 the mostly public development association behind the company sold its stake in the company to the company itself and its employees, with managemet getting the most. In 1996 the company was listed on the OTC market, but in 2000 its shares were listed on the Icelandic Stock Exchange. During the first four months of 1997 it rose about 277 percent and had risen by 400 percent from its first introduction. Hence the CEO became a wealthy man.

So SDG has an elite/fat cat background, but he is personally clean and maybe he is a reformer. Time will show.

IP is gaining in the first poll post Benediktssons "I might resign" interview, which really surprises me, but apparently his gamble paid of. If you can trust the poll. Its conducted by Fréttablaðið and a private TV channel. Same guys that had the outlier with 40%+ PP support.

Bright Future 6,5%
Progressive Party 30,3%
Independence Party 26,9%
SDA 13,7%
Left Greens 7,9%
Right Greens 0.8 %
Households Party 2,4%
Democracy Watch 1,7%
Dawn 3,0%
Pirates 5.6%
 

Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson, a professor of political science, says "Bjarni Benediktsson openness last weekend has clearly been effective". He is also stating the obvious, that the electorate is still highly volatil, but that voters are primarily moving between PP and IP and not across the blocs.

The polls response rate was 63.2 percent. Participants were selected by random sampling from the National Registry. Respondents were divided evenly by gender and relatively by residence and age (so no omitting elderly people).
But then the BS starts. They start out asking: Which list would you vote for if the parliamentary elections was held today? If they do not receive a specific answer to the question they ask: Which list is you most likely to prefer? If the respondent still dont answer they finally ask: Is it likely that you would vote for the Independence Party or any other list?

This obviously increases the IP share artificially.  

I dont know, apparently both the major Icelandic pollsters suck. One excludes pensioners and the other asks specifically if people wanna vote IP. I guess we will have to wait for Gallup.

The poll confirms the urban/rural basic pattern:

SDA, Bright Future and Pirates get their votes in Greater Reykjavik
PP is still a provincial party
IP is doing slighly better in the urban areas than the country. Inly Left Greens have a fairly equal representation. Their 5 seats would go to 5 different constituencies.

The Right Greens seem to be trying a bit of xenophobia. It didnt work for their fellow "Libertarians" in The Liberal Party last time, but who knows, maybe Iceland is ready for it now.
Their chairman Franklin Gudmundur Jonsson said in a TV interview that the Schengen agreement is not efficient and that "undesirables are coming into Iceland". When he was asked to elaborate he said that the problem was connected to the increasing crime rates in the country and that criminal foreigners and "individuals of colour" are entering the country.

"I just want to check if it pays off for us to stay in Schengen or not. It's that simple".
"Is undesirable people coming into the country? Yes - I'd like to stop it".

What does Iceland have in the way of immigrants/minorities?

Until the 90s Iceland was extremely homogenous with about 1,5% foreign born, mainly from mainland Scandinavia. Now the relative size of it minority population is about equal to the other Nordic countries, but the distribution is different. Its mainly Eastern Europeans, no old people and few children.

From 1996 to 2008 immigrants share of the population increased from 1.8% to 8%, this has dropped to around 7% since but seems stable now, so there are around 22-23.000 immigrants. Many of the Poles and Lithuanians that stayed on after the crash are bringing their families now. They still have less than 2.000 second generation immigrants because its been such a recent phenomenon.

In 2008 68% came from "Europe outside the Nordic countries" and 7% from Scandinavia. A third of all immigrants in Iceland are born in Poland. Other large (relatively speaking) immigrant groups are Philippines 1,200 and Lithuanians 1,200. Around 1.800 from the Nordic countries. They also have a couple of thousand refugees incl. some Africans. 
I dont know about recent immigration patterns apart from the fact that the Polish share has dropped.

The SDA-LG government has established various cultural centers, language programmes etc -  they call it "the infrastructure for a multicultural society".
There is no real anti-immigration tradition, some guys tried to establish a Nationalist Party around 2008, but it never got of the ground.

A poll about who voters think would be the best Prime Minister:

Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (PP) 33,9%
Bjarni Benediktsson (IP) 19,8%
Katrín Jakobsdóttir (Left Greens) 13,3%
Árna Pál Árnason (SDA) 10,4%
Someone else 22,6%

So SDG has slightly more support than his party, BB less support, but not a lot. On the left side Arnason is clearly less popular than his party and also clearly behind Jakobsdottir who has significantly more support than her party, but is far from the "Queen of the Left" level she used to be at. 22,6% preferring someone else is a high number, but most of them probably wants Hanna Birna Kristjansdottir.

With IP campaigning hard on how a vote for PP is a vote for another leftist government, it is definitely an advantage for PP that so many centre-right voters wants SDG as Prime Minister.

Wow I didn't Katrin was so popular. Why is she more popular that Left-Green vote share would indicate ?

Oh, and since she seems to be an expert on Icelandic author Arnaldur, you can all read his novel "Arctic Chill", which describes the status of immigration in Iceland quite well. At least it gave me a pretty good indication.

She is by far the most charismatic left wing politician in Iceland, but this is actually quite low for her - resembling the decline of the party. All that fiscal responsibility doesn't appeal to young people. I wouldn't be surprised if they were left with the highest average age of all parties. Basically being left with those born 1945-60, who were young in the late 60s and 70s.

AI is a good writer, but Arctic Chill gives a very dark picture, too dark IMO, but then again whats a crime story without darkness and despair?

Two new polls out, both confirming a rise in support for the IP!

Firstly, MMR shows the IP leading for the first time since mid-March:

Independence Party: 27.5%
Progressive Party: 25.6%
Social Democrats: 13.5%
Bright Future: 8.3%
Left-Green: 8.1%
Pirates: 6.7%

Gallup shows a 2.6% lead for the Progressives, a significant decline from their last poll last week. All in all Benediktsson's decision seems to have payed off.

I assume that such a result would still result in a Progressive Party government?

It clearly hasn't harmed them, but I think its more likely that it is their "PP will form another left wing government" line of attack that's beginning to work.

Gallup has better numbers for the government, as one would expect from a poll that includes pensioners, but its strange that IP is lower and Pirates are higher than in MMR, it should be the other way around. There is no way old people are voting Pirates in disproportionate numbers! But there is always statistical uncertainty, so one shouldn't read too much into those differences.

Nevertheless I tend to trust Gallup more, they seem to have a normal methodology.

Anyway the tendency is pretty clear. Government and IP up, PP down.

Gallup gives PP 20, IP 17, SDA 10,  Left Greens 6, Pirates 5 and Bright Future 5. Thats a 35 seat majority for a centrist PP, BF, SDA government.  

Okay, we are getting more polling now. I promise not to clutter the board by posting every one of them, but this is a quality one from the Social Science Research Institute for Morgunbladid and it confirms Gallup apart from SDA not gaining in this one.

Independence Party 24.4% - up 5.5 percentage points from their last survey.
Progressive Party 28.1%.
 
IP is getting their voters back. In the last survey 29.2% of respondents who voted for the Independence Party in 2009 intend to vote for the Progressive Party, but now this proportion has dropped to 18.4%. The proportion of IP voters staying loyal to the party has increased from 56.2% in the last survey to 69.1% now. The chickens are coming home to roast :P
SDA is stable in this one, but Left Greens is up by 0,5%.
 
SDA 12.2%
Left Greens 9.3%
Bright Future 7.4% (down from 10,9% in their last poll)
Pirates 6.3%
Democracy Watch 3.3%
Dawn 3%

Lars Christensen, head of the Research Departemet at Denmarks biggest bank Danske Bank has indirectly criticized PP in an interview with Bloomberg news agency, its quoted by Morgunbladid and Fréttablaðið and making its way around IP friendly news media in Iceland.

Christensen was co-author of the harshly critical report "Iceland, Geyser crisis" in 2006 and became quite famous as an "Iceland-basher" back then.
 
"If the political parties take advantage of the failed banks assets to pay for their election promises it will lead to economic crisis in Iceland. By confiscating the assets of the old banks, Iceland will close the door to outside investment and Iceland's possibilities to pick up additional credit on the international markets".
 
"It is important to reduce household debt, but using assets from failed banks that are owned by the claimants is not the right way. Many claimants are investors who are interested in investing further in Iceland, for example the Nordic pension funds. If their assets are confiscated then international investors will not forget this".

He has obviously got some points, its not easy for a small nation to take on the international capital markets and get away with it.

The thing is whether Chinese and Korean investors, who are generally quite interested in the North Atlantic economies, will be influenced by a "confiscation" of mainly Western European assets? Maybe they will seize the investment opportunities in Iceland anyway.

Yes, the only thing that's 99,9% certain at the moment is that PP will be part of the government
and IMO its also 80-85% certain that they will lead it. The big questions are who they will govern together with and whether they are going to try putting pressure on the creditors or not + what happens to the constitution bill (it takes 22 seats to block it - how close can IP get?).

PP is the party in the middle and don't want to go back to their old role as junior partner. So an IP led government would only happen if IP became significantly bigger than PP and there wasn't any centrist majority. Also I am not even sure Benediktsson really would like to be Prime Minister given his precarious situation within the party.

You would need something like this for an IP led government:

Independence Party: 30.5%
Progressive Party: 22.6%
Social Democrats: 13.5%
Bright Future: 8.3%
Left-Green: 8.1%
Pirates: 6.7%

Even in this case PP could block Benediktsson by simply saying "no". If the parties cant agree the President gets to chose a Prime Minister. Grimson is an old leftist and would pick SDG over Benediktsson, as more parties could accept SDG.
This scenario has only happened once (in 1942), but it gives PP a lot of bargaining power, that it exists. Even if they probably wouldn't want to use it since it would make a lot of centre-right voters mad.

EU has been virtually absent from the campaign, but its actually one of the few topics where the government is in line with the voters, according to a Vísir poll.
Even if countless polls have shown that Icelanders dont want to join the EU, they want to vote about it anyway. Probably due to a feeling of being ignored by their leaders.

A. Finish the negotations and hold a referendum (SDA, LG, BF) 55%
B. Redraw the membership application (IP and PP) 34%
C. Put the negotiations on hold and hold a referendum about whether they should be resumed 11%
 
Generally more men prefer to finish what they started, while women are more likely to prefer a clean break. The only constituency with a majority for ending the negotiations right away is the rural NW.

Option A gets:

SDA 92% (no surprise there)
Bright Future 87%
LG 72% (it is the party line, but a bit higher than I would have expected)
Pirates 58%

But even on the right wing its a minority that prefer the official party line of just walking away.

PP: 40% for finishing, which is pretty high, while 48% wants to shut the door right away, 12% for "making everything as complicated as possible"
IP: 38% for finishing, 46% for withdrawing the application, 16% for "making everything as complicated as possible"

What's actually green about the "Right Greens", other than their party colour?

Not much it seems. A bit of nature conservation, but it looks like a gimmick. Maybe something to sweeten their cut taxes/foreigners and EU are bad-package to more moderate voters.

As you can see its mostly platitudes:

"The party is a right-green party. This reflects respect of and concern for the environment and the need for intelligent and practical utilization of natural resources based upon green solutions. The regulatory framework is already stringent, but contains holes to fill and knots to untie. The party wants to make people in general—including sectors such as agriculture, tourism, energy companies and the fisheries, all of which depend their existence on nature and its resources—to be more aware of the importance of the well being of the environment and their responsibility towards it. The party wants to provide incentives, help and assistance not only to protect the environment, but also to service it".

They do have a few concrete suggestions:

"This may for instance be done by allowing the collection of entrance fees at tourist sites to provide necessary funds for upkeep; by providing incentives and help to landowners and farmers for increased land reclamation and forestry, while grazing restrictions on livestock need to be enforced. Our new fisheries policy will ensure that there is no more undesired catch dumping at sea. Where there is a carrot there must also be a stick. More and tougher disciplinary tools should also be provided to keep these important matters in check".  

Going into the final week it may be time to look at the possible governments:

All the polls indicate that PP will have to be part of a government. PPs main goals are:

1. To marginalize IP and become the "national party of Iceland".
2. To keep Iceland out of the EU.
3. To solve the crisis.

It may be a bit cynical to put them in this order, but its probably also close to the truth.

In order to achieve goal no. 1 they have to honour (at least partly) their campaign pledge about writing off 20% of all price-indexed household mortgages by forcing the foreign claim holders of the defaulted banks to pay for this write down against being allowed to move the money they have left outside of the Icelandic economy. If they cant, voters will punish them next time.

The Icelandic press operates with just three basic scenarios:

1. IP - PP under PP leadership.
2. IP - PP under IP leadership
3. The centrist option PP - SDA - BF

In principle PP could also establish a minority government with the backing of other non-IP parties, but since Iceland has no tradition for this and nobody wants a weak government during a crisis, this is apparently of the table.

Option 1. This is OK for PP, since they are the big brother, but not ideal.  

Pros:
 
- Stops all talks with the EU.

- Kills the constitution (which many rural and conservative PPs don't like).

- Possible "Prime Minister effect" gains next time at the expense of IP.

- Secures a pro-business, pro development/extraction policy.

Cons:

- IP is pro foreign investment and don't want to put pressure on the creditors.

- In order to profile their party IPs right wing will keep demanding tax cuts, this will scare welfare loving centrist voters away next time.


Option 2: Worst case. Sending them right back into their traditional junior partner role.

Pros:

- Stops all talks with the EU.

- Kills the constitution.

- Secures a pro-business, pro development/extraction policy.

Cons:

- Benediktsson will be an extremely weak PM and will probably soon be replaced by HBK, who can then crush the right wing and position herself as an Icelandic Frederik Reinfeldt, which would marginalize PP.

- In this scenario IP is even less likely to put pressure on the creditors.


Option 3: Best realistic option.

Pros:

- Establish PP as the unifier in Icelandic politics and marginalizes IP on the right wing.
 
- No unpopular welfare cuts (at least not the really hard ones).

- Secures a strong and efficient government.

- Will likely secure a "moderate" constitution without full proportionality and with a watered down clause about public ownership to resources. Most voters will be satisfied with this.

Cons:
 
- Getting in bed with the EU-lovers forces them to finish the negotiations. Since they can be pretty sure to win a referendum on EU, this might not be such a big problem - but they still run the risk of losing and a government campaigning both for and against EU would be a bit weird.
 
- Super serious and investor friendly SDA wont want to pressure the creditors, much too risky, but maybe they can be pressured into accepting a less ambitious version of "the plan".
 
- BFs main leader is Guðmundur Steingrímsson, a former PP politician whose dad and granddad where both PP chairmen and Prime Ministers, so they would have to work with a renegade from the PP royalty.  

Option 4: PP - LG - SDA  

This is not as unrealistic as one might think. Seen from a PP perspective the Left Greens are fellow Euro-sceptics and as leftists they are more likely to agree to squeezing the creditors to help "ordinary families". Since the big development projects with river pollution and flooding of highland areas have already been implemented, they could likely accept a green environmental policy for a while. But it would write the IP attack adds for next time in advance and IP would be practically guaranteed to win the next election. IMO they would only consider this if the  alternative was an IP-PP government under IP leadership.

Things are starting to heath up in the cold north. At a meeting at Grand Hotel in Reykjavik  SDG said that the rest of the election campaign will be ugly and that his opponents will use personal attacks.

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"Our opponents, both right and left, do not seem to see any other way than to attack the Progressive Party, and not on an objective basis. Most other parties have acknowledged in recent weeks that the Progressive Party's methods are feasible. But despite that they have not the courage to take on our project instead they attack us in a personal way".

He warned that if IP gets any bigger there is a "clear risk" of a government of Social Democrats and the Independence Party and that it is important for Iceland to get "a government that dares".

So now he is saying that a vote on IP is a vote for a left wing government! (well kinda...)

"There is an obvious risk that this will lead to a government of the "index parties" the Social Democrats and the Independence Party. A government that will safeguard indexation and secure that Icelandic home owners do not get a correction of their loans after the collapse".

"I fear leniency against creditors with the possible control of the Independence Party and the Alliance (SDA)".

"The government is willing to submit to demands of foreign creditors, but is not willing to stand up for local homes. I can not believe that Iceland wants such a government, I believe that Iceland wants a government that dares."
 
PPs suggestions gets a lot of criticism for being unrealistic and an unfair benefit to those with mortgages (townies, middle aged, established) and not all the young, elderly and rurals who are also in financial distress.

In the same article SDAs cashier says that the general debt forgiveness on mortgages is "unsystematic" and "unfair". "75% of the cancellations goes to households that do not need it. Two thirds of those in distress, however, would remain in trouble".

Well, probably just rhetoric. I cant see an SDA - IP alliance unless there is some sort of internal coup inside IP where the moderates takes charge - preferably pro-EU moderates - and that seems unrealistic. But with PP attacking left and right its not getting easier to form a government.

SDG has also just announced, that he has bought a place in the back and beyond of rural Eastern Iceland and changed his address to it. This will go down well with the party faithfull, but he will probably stay in his Reykjavik flat most of the time.

EDIT: It turns out he just changed his address to his supporter Jónas Guðmundssons farm Hrafnabjörg to reside in the North East constituency - PPs best.
 

The whole "personal attack" thing is because several government politicians have accused SDG of not having the DPhil in economics and political science from Oxford University he claims. He has refused to allow the media to check it. The deputy from PP said on TV that PP will not negotiate with SDA and Left Greens because of "the vicious personal attacks on SDG", but SDG later denied this, saying PP needs to keep their options open after the election.

My dream coalition in Iceland would be PP-Left Green-Bright Future with outside support from Pirates.

What's the Icelandic Pirate Party's ideology look like?

I'm always suspicious of Pirate Parties as Trojan horses for right-libertarianism.

Why?

Everybody is getting one, so why not Iceland?


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The Left-Right divide is just senseless; It feels like home:


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Their founder Birgitta Jonsdottir is considered a leftist and most of their voters are types that would otherwise have voted Left Green. They are investor friendly, but focusing on creating "an attractive business environment for small scale companies". They are very pro the new constitution (direct democracy, transparency, civil liberties, public ownership to natural resources).

Biggest problem IMO is that they don't have a position on EU - going "let the people decide" instead.

Left wing positions:

- separation of church and state
- active recruitment of immigrants (could be seen as liberal as well)
- full transparency regarding ownership and sale of all financial instruments (stocks, bonds etc.)
- public ownership of natural resources
- back to the coop tradition regarding housing
- change from regressive taxes like VAT to progressive taxes
- investments in the education system (Finnish model)

They seem to want the overall level of taxation to be stable, but are unclear on this. Being focused on entrepreneurship is their main non-typical leftist issue. Apart from education they don't want to expand the pubic sector, but are saying they can make it more efficient.

They say the usual "left/right is dated" stuff.

Interview in The Reykjavik Grapewine:

http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/Piratapartyid-The-Pirate-Party-Interviewed (http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/Piratapartyid-The-Pirate-Party-Interviewed)

RG got interviews with 13 of the parties (not Rural Party and Sturla Jonsson), if you are interested.

SDA steps up the rhetoric and implies that a PP/IP government will mean a return to the old corrupt ways.
SDA chairman Arni Pall Arnason says to the tabloid DV that:

"Bjarni and Sigmundur are like doves in courtship these days and seem dedicated to reviving cooperation between the Independence Party and the Progressives. The only way to prevent it is to vote on the Social Democrats. We need power to affect government and an unchanged line regarding corruption control. We have too much experience with what happens when these parties are in charge".

I wonder if that's smart. They cant scare enough voters to prevent an IP/PP majority so their only hope of retaining power is working with PP and they are touchy when it comes to corruption allegations. But perhaps SDA has already ruled out a PP-Left coalition. LG is much less aggressive towards PP, so maybe they havent.

In his blog professor Stefan Olafsson analyses how the large number of new parties affect the election.

Their primary support comes from the government. IP and PP only loses about 8% of their previous voters versus 24-32% for the government.
 
LG loses even more to the new parties than SDA. In Fréttablaðiðs survey (published April 19) about 32-33% of those who voted LG in 2009 are spread on the new parties, most of them on Bright Future (14%) and Pirates (12%).
 
About 24-25% of those who voted for the Social Democrats in 2009 say they now support the new parties, including 7% who support Bright Future. The rest is very spread out.

Nearly one fifth of SDAs former voters goes to the Progressive Party.

About 17% of the 24-25% that are spread on the new small parties goes to parties that donot seem to get a seat in the Althing.

IP on the other hand loses only 7-8% of their previous followers to the new parties and PP 8-9%.
 
The government loses more to the new parties than they lose to the Progressive Party. So getting left wingers to vote for parties that actually have a chance will be crucial.
 
"The majority of the votes on the new parties are dead and impotent, providing no MPs. This should be food for thought for the voters - and for those who organize the election campaign for the government".
 
He points out that if about 10% of the votes are wasted PP and IP will only need about 40% of the vote to get a majority given the higher value of rural votes.

While we are waiting for the first "final week" poll its still PP engaged in a two way battle against SDA and IP making it hard to predict who will ally with whom once the dust has settled.

SDG keeps up the economic nationalism, and I think this is a thing this guy actually believes in, not just a tool to capture votes. He got a lot of flag a couple of years ago for saying that foreign investors don't care about Icelandic interests and that Icelandic investors were preferable if the country where to control its own destiny. So he is consistent about economic nationalism.

On his website he says:

"The situation is not complicated. After discussion in recent weeks, it is clear that either the government will be formed on the priorities of the Progressive Party or the government will be formed against them.

Either there is formed a government of debt adjustment, the abolition of indexation and a healthier financial system or a government of those who believe in the right to let hedge funds decide when Iceland breaks free from the shackles of debt and restrictions. The current government considers it inappropriate to use the unique opportunity to cater for indebted households instead preferring an unchanged financial system."

If he is serious about this it will make an IP-PP coalition virtually impossible. So whether or not he really means it or is going to find an excuse to drop it after the election is crucial.

Note: Iceland has had 4-12% devaluation of its krona each year since 2009 and this gives higher import prices leading to inflation for which workers and pensioners are not compensated. So the purchasing power of employees and pensioners keeps dropping, while household loans are indexed so creditors are not hurt by inflation. In order to avoid a collapse of the financial system the leftist government has upheld this system. But LG might be willing to change it, while it will be really hard for SDA to do so.

Journalist Ingi Freyr Vilhjálmsson has written a piece called "Management of the wealthy classes" in DV about the coming government and Icelands chances of getting rid of "the old ways". I hope he isnt right, but the article definetly sums up the fears of the Icelandic left.

"Few things can prevent the Independence Party and the Progressive Party from being the country's two largest political parties after the upcoming elections. The only question is which party will be larger and consequently whether Bjarni Benediktsson sits in the chair or Sigmund David Gunnlaugsson will be Prime Minister".

"Is it not obvious that these two groups would together form a strong management in the wake of the election rather than either party reaching out and governing together with more parties? I think so, the ideology and interests of the parties overlap".
 
"When the Progressive throws the mask after the votes are counted, it turns out that it is too right winged to be considered credible as a "peoples party" and "household protector". The Progressives is first and foremost about power; the party is everything and anything - anything - if it means just cause for governing every time. The party does not stand for anything other than being a mask for lobbyists and developers of huge scale facilities".

"What is the Progressive Party? Answer: discretion. Who are the progressives? Answer: Ásgrímsson, Alfred Thorsteinsson, Gunnlaugur Sigmundsson (SDGs dad), Finnur Ingólfsson Bjorn Ingi Hrafnsson, Oscar Bergsson and Sigmund David Gunnlaugsson. Kind of a corporate will department for special interests, ignoring households and collective interests for the interests of a chosen few; the chosen ones on top of big fishing and the barons of the landbúnaðar (agricultural association) will be at the forefront".

"So history repeats itself. In 1995 after the end of "the evaporator" strong feelings bound these two groups together for twelve years and they trust their entrenched power on privatization and class interest".

"Upstairs in Hádegismóum (Morgunbladids office) sits David Oddsson, the most powerful man behind the scenes in the Independence Party, still being called "chairman" of some independents, and gets Guðni Ágústsson (minister of agriculture under Oddsson and PP chairman 2007-08) to visit him together with the pilot Thorolf Gislason, relative of (Sigmundur) David and the most powerful man behind the scenes in the Progressive Party. The power of these two men in the two parties is subject to debate, however, they are informal - and let their "surface cousins" ​​keep the strings (or reins) in the parties as both are more sophisticated than most".
 
"Their interests revolve around keeping Iceland outside the European Union, protecting the currency, prevent changes to the quota system, the Constitution, the resource provisions; all rule changes that brings wealth and power to those opposite them.
(giving the elite POV)...abolish the wealth tax which feels too heavy for these family groups and even drives them out of the country, stop providing pointless funds to the Office of the Special Prosecutor so he can research the friends and family members of these parties, and in general to correct the discouraging leftist bias that has been in Icelandic community in recent years".
 
"This government of the Independents and Progressives is probably already in the cards. Bjarni Benediktsson said, when asked in an interview with the prime time news on Friday that he believed the Progressives to be next to the Independence Party in "the political spectrum" and that therefore he would prefer to work with the group after the election, however, it was not the "only option".

"The difference between Independence and Progressives is that the former do not try to lie to people that it is anything other than it is, an instrument for special interests. Voters know where they have the party while the Progressive Party covers itself with socialism".

"The next boom is hanging in the air around the corner and the majority of the population is eager to disappear towards a new adventure with the Independence Party and Progressive Party in control".

Some nicknames for Icelandic politicians:

Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir - Lady Gaga, heilaga Jóhanna ('holy Jóhanna')

Former LG chairman Steingrímur Jóhann Sigfússon - allsherjarráðherran ('the general minister'), Skattgrímur (tax-Grimur), Skallagrímur (bald-Grimur, but also a character in the Sagas), Steinbítur (the catfish), Georg Bjarnfreðarson (a caricature of an old school Communist by comedian Jón Gnarr).

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Steingrímur Sigfússon - The man with more nicknames than any other Icelandic politician.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFhwWCTQlp4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFhwWCTQlp4)
Trailer to the movie about Georg Bjarnfreðarson

Former PM Geir H. Haarde. No nickname, but the verb haardera ('to do absolutely nothing and hope the problems just go away by themselves').
 
Bjarni Benediktsson - Bjarni Ben or Bjarni Vafningur Ben after the dubious affairs surrounding the company Vafningur and the lending caroussel going on around it before the crash.
 
Davíð Oddsson - Hádegismórinn ("The Hádegis Monster", since Morgunbladid is located at Hádegismóar in Reykjavík. Mórinn = 'ghost or monster'), Doddsson, Dabbi kóngur (Dabbi is little David , but it also means slobby, so its both 'King Davíd' and King Slobby, after his role in the crash)

Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson - Sigmundur Dabbi

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King David alias Doddson alias The Hádegis Monster  

According to the Icelandic tabloid DV PP chairman Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson didnt get a degree in Oxford, but he did attend Oxford University from 2004 to 2009. According to Icelandic students studying at Oxford in those years he attended Wolfson College. But the people interviewed are positive SDG did not complete a degree from the school, neither a master's nor a doctorate.

So he lied and also, of course, refused to give his approval to DV to get formal confirmation of his educational "experience" from Oxford University.

Wonder how the voters will react to this news...

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Wolfson College - "Ziggi Dabbi was here"

But did he graduate?
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New poll (finally!) from Fréttablaðið. It was conducted Monday 22/4 and Tuesday
23/4, so the respondents knew about the allegations about SDGs missing Oxford degree, but not all of them knew DV now have proof of it.

The two big centre-right parties are below 50% for the first time in the campaign, but still get 57% of the MPs. LG above 10%, also for the first time. SDA is fairly stable, but gains a point compared to the last poll. None of the small parties look likely to make it.  

PP 25,9% (19)
IP 23,8% (17)
SDA 13,3% (10)
Left Greens 10,4% (7)
Bright Future 8,1% (6)
Pírates 6,3% (4)

Dawn 2,4%
Democracy Watch 2,6%
Households Party 2,5%
Right Greens 2,5%

Rainbow 0,7%
Rural Party 0,1%
Humanists 0,1%
Peoples Front of Iceland 0,0%
Sturla Jonsson 0,0%
Blank 1,3%

Unsure whether the aggressive SDA style is working, I think they lose as much as they gain at the moment. Icelanders like their politicians to be nice and civil, and stuff like Arnassons refusal do discuss the constitution with Democracy Watch (saying he doesnt want to talk about the past!) isnt helping. LG seems to be gaining slowly with a more factual and positive style.

Looking at the wasted votes, there are 5,1% for right wing or centre-right parties, 2,6% for Democracy Watch, which is a mixed bag, and only 3,2% on the left. Still I would say that a collapse of Dawn and some left wingers leaving Democracy Watch is the most likely change in this group. The people voting Household and Right-Green have likely made up their mind to go anti-establishment this time.

Icelanders still don't like the EU according to a new Gallup poll, no surprise there since there hasn't been a "yes" majority at any time in the last 4 years.

No 52,2%
Yes 27,6%
Undecided 20,2%

More than 60% of naysayers are "very negative" towards membership and only 40% of the yes-vote is "very positive". So 11% euro-philes versus 32% euro-phobes. Tough odds to beat.

Also a majority to finish the membership negotiations in this one:

Finish the negotiations 52,7%
Stop the negotiations 30,7 %
Undecided 16,5%

Only IP and Right Green voters have a majority for an immediate stop to the talks with Bruxelles.

IP confirms that they still want to close EU's representation in Reykjavik if they win! PP and the rest of the parties don't.

New poll from the Institute of Social Sciences at Háskóla Íslands (University of Iceland). Its conducted 17.-23. Apríl, so mixed regarding the voters knowledge about this SDG degree-thing, but it confirms that LG is increasing and PP declining. IP and PP are about equal.
The difference between 38,1% to the leftists and centrists and 49,2% to IP + PP is still big, but its decreasing. 

IP 24,8%
PP 24,4%
SDA 13,6%
Left Greens 10,8%
Bright Future 7,3%
Pirates 6,4%

Dawn 3.2%
Right Greens 2.8%
Democracy Watch 2.6%
Households Party 1.4%

Others (incl. blanks) 2.7%

First poll with a majority of answers after DVs exposure. Its conducted 22. to 25. April 2013.

PP is going down, the question now is how much.

IP 26.7%
PP 22.4%

So 49,1% combined vs. 39,8% to leftist and centrists - 9,3% difference, the smallest in a long time. 11,1% wasted votes.

SDA 13.0%
Left Greens 11.6%

It will be interesting if LG can pass SDA.

Bright Future 7.7%
Pirates 7.5%  

Democracy Watch 3.5%  
Dawn 2.9%
Households Party 1.8%
Right Greens 1.3%  
Sturla Jonsson 0.8% - first poll with any support for our truckie

Rainbow 0.5 %
Peoples Front of Iceland  0.1%  
Rural Party 0.2%
Humanist Party 0,0%  

Support for the government (incl. BF) stands at 32.3%. Up from 26.4% in the previous survey. But still much too low to save them.
  

We are getting a lot of polling, this one is from Fréttablaðið. LG at 11%. They are pretty clearly surging, but this one also has SDA at almost 15% getting the government above 25,8%, the highest in a long time.

IP+PP 48,6%.

Progressive Party 25.6% (19)
IP 23,0% (17)

SDA 14.8% (10)
Left Greens 11% ( 8 )
Biright Future 7,7% (5)
Pirates 6.4%  (4)

No clear winner of the important party leader debate last night on Stöð 2, Icelands big private TV channel. But a couple of losers. Especially Bright Future needed a better showing from Steingrimursson to turn the tide,

Observers tend to say Katrin Jakobsdottir did best, but according to DVs poll on facebook she finished third. SDG proved he is a better debater than Benediktsson, but still the difference isnt that big.

DV poll:

"Who do you think did best?"

Arni Pall Arnason (SDA) 24,3
SDG (PP) 22,1
Katrin Jakobsdottir (LG) 20,1
Bjarni Benediktsson (IP) 14,3
Birgitta Jonsdottir (Pirates) 10,8
Gudmundur Stengrimsson (Bright Future) 8,4

Looking back at the polls preceding the 2009 election, it looks like while SDA and IP had been polled quite on the spot, Left-Green had been quite overpolled and Progressive underpolled.

Do you think there is a rule to it, or was it circumstancial ?

Looking at the current trend, it seems that Bright Future voters are coming back to Left-Green by two or three points. Still, it doesn't seem like the last polls will show Bright Future below the 5% threshold, so they should retain their share. However, with 7.2% last time, the Citizen's Movement had only won the last seat in both Reykjavik constituencies, and the second-to-last one in the Southwest, plus one leveling seat on the national level. This time, the Southwest has one more proportional seat, so it could be won at around 6% nationally, then depending on local strength of course.

There are several stakes here : who will be first between IP and PP ? who will be 3rd between SDA and LG ? who will be 5th between BF and Pirates ? Could there be a governing PP-SDA (i.e : 32 seats) ?

My final prediction, unless more polls are published :

IP 26.2
PP 24
SDA 14
LG 10.8
BF 8
Pirate 6.6

DW 3
Dawn 2.7
RG 1.4
Others 3.3

PP isn't likely to be underpolled this time with the enormous extra support. Last time it was likely  rurals and rural born deciding at the last moment to vote for them despite all the mess that made the difference between the polls and the result.
LG are down to real leftists now, last time there where many centre-right voters tired of the scandals who considered "clean" LG, but then changed their mind in the voting booth and went back to IP/PP after all - kind of a "better the devil you know" effect.

I doubt there is that much interchange between BF and LG. BFs loss is more likely to be going to SDA  (fellow Euro positive and centrist, but with a sharper profile).
I think LG will get voters back who considered Dawn and the Pirates or simply staying at home and some SDA turned off by Arnasons style. There is likely quite a bit of movement back and forth between LG and SDA.

One interesting aspect is that experts say this is likely to be the first election since 1983 where there isn't enough levelling seats to secure proportionality. PP will simply get too many regular seat in the rural constituencies this time. This should be at the expense of IP and the Pirates. The Pirates may not even get in at 6% (but then I think they will get a little more). But this means PP will be the biggest party even if IP passes them with a few percentage points (maybe even 3,5-4).

I hope we get at least one poll where the entire sample is after DVs exposure of SDGs degree-lie on 23-4. It would be nice to see if it changed anything.
This idea with polling over 2-4 days blurs the picture. I like snapshots at a particular moment in the campaign.

Earlier in this thread I wrote that HBK would be the most likely person to clean up IP, I still think she is simply because she is such a strong politician, but..

One of her backers is the lawyer Kjartan Gunnarsson, who was manager of IP for 26 years (1980-2006) and is still on the party's central committee. He is also former Director of Landsbanki and Chairman of VIS.
He is a great supporter and friend of David Oddsson and was known as the party fixer back in the days.
This guy hates Benediktsson, because Benediktsson decided to return huge contributions to IP from Landsbanki that Kjartansson had made shortly before it became illegal to do so in connection with the government's takeover of the bank. Kjartansson took this as a personal insult implying he had done something immoral.
 
Kjartansson is rumoured as the one paying for the polls showing HBK to be much more popular than BB. Whether she is somehow in alliance with him is unknown.

All this just shows that IP is seriously fycked up and that the Oddsson crowd is still highly influential.

Moderates in the party has even tried to drag former chairman Thorstein Pallsson (65) out of retirement and get him to take over. He headed IP until 1991, when Oddsson ousted him, and is seen as the last unblemished Conservative leader in Iceland. He is highly critical of the party's right wing turn and euro-scepticism, which he thinks blocks its possibility to work with other parties (read SDA). So far Pallsson has refused to challenge the leadership, and as an EU-supporter is unlikely to get elected, even if he changed his mind. But the fact that a 65 year old retired guy who hasn't been in politics for two decades is the anti-Oddsson wings best hope shows how messed up this party really is.

One more poll from Frettabladid, but it still includes answers from the 22th, so it doesnt really help us determine the state of the race. Nevertheless:

Progressive Party 25.4% (19)
Independence Party 22.9 percent (17)

Joint: 48.3 percent and 36 MPs

SDA 14.7 percent (10)
Left Greens 10.9 percent  ( 8 )
Bright Future 7.6 percent (5)
Pirates  6.3 percent (4)

The seats in this are allocated  proportionally, and PP would likely get more IRL.

New poll from Gallup but still "impure" since its conducted 18.-25. It has a 60% respondence rate, which is lower than most of the others.

Independence Party 27,9%
Progressive Party 24.7%
SDA 14.6%
Left Greens 10%
Bright Future 6.6%
Pirates 6.1% 
Democracy Watch 2.8% 
Right Greens 2, 6%
Dawn 2,6%
Households Party 1.3%
 
It has some regional data:
 
The Independence Party is strongest in the suburban-exurban Southwest with 33% and has their second best area in the rural South constituency (no numbers given). Vestmanna Islands are generally a stronghold for them + they have some strong candidates down there, so thats probably why its polling better than Reykjavik.

Progressives has the largest proportion of supporters in the South with 35% followed by 34% of voters in both the Northwest and Northeast constituencies. So they are basically at the same level all over rural Iceland. Historically NE was clearly stronger, so thats remarkable. 34% is actually lower than I would have expected in the NE.
 
SDA is strongest in the SW with 16-17% support.

Left Greens are strongest in middle class Reykjavík North with 17% support.

Bright Future and Pirates are strongest in Reykjavik, about equal in South and North Reykjavik.
(no numbers given). I would have expected them to be stronger in the more middle class North, but the class difference between the two is probably not that big this year (they change the boundaries every election to make them roughly equal in population).

The 11 leaders from the parties with candidates in all six constituencies debated in RUV earlier this evening in the final election debate. Same three winners as last time according to DVs readers, but this time with Jakobsdottir ahead of SDG and Arnason. With Benediktsson again finishing far behind the other "Big 4" leaders.
 
DV poll:

"Who do you think did best?"

Katrin Jakobsdottir (LG) 20,0%
Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson (PP) 18,0%
Arni Pall Arnason (SDA) 17,3%


Bjarni Benediktsson (IP) 9,2%
Thorvaldur Gylfason (Democracy Watch) 7,8%
Gudmundur Stengrimsson (Bright Future) 7,2%

The leaders from the Household Party, Dawn and the Pirates all finished between 4,9-5,8%.

Only 1% thought Bjarni Hardarson from Rainbow was best and a measly 2% saw Gudmundur Franklin Jonsson from the Right Greens winning the debate. This poor showing likely dooms the Right Greens, since it was their last chance to get the 2,5-3% extra they need. Commentators generally agree that Gylfason did weill, and his relatively strong performance may give Democracy Watch a chance, if they were already at around 3-3,5%, which is not unlikely.

We don't seem to be getting any polls today, so no polls exclusively from the second half of the week, which means that the effect of this degree thing is not properly measured and Benediktssons defeat in the debates is also not figured in.

Benediktsson did much worse than the other Big 4 leaders in the debates, so I think that cost them a few points. Democracy Watch did good, and many voters care about the constitution, so I think they will be the best of the small parties, while Right Greens leader were terrible, but perhaps their voters don't care about this? Still I think they missed their chance.

This is really a guess, because of the lack of good polling, but my bid is:

IP 24
PP 24
SDA 15
LG 12
BF 7
Pirates 6

DW 4
Dawn 2,5
Households Party 2,5
RG 1.5
Blanks and micro parties 1,5

Its based on trends and good debate performances by Jakobsdottir, SDG and Arnason.

PP could be much worse if voters care about the degree-lie. But I don't think so, since it probably would have shown more clearly in the multi-day polls we got.

Also 23.000 has already voted before election day, thats probably 10% of the votes and twice as many as last time, this will likely benefit Bright Future that were doing better earlier on, but possibly also PP. So thats another uncertainty.

It looks like a low participation rate. In the big SW constituency only 16.7% had voted at 13:00 down from 20.1% in 2009. Dunno who this is going to benefit, but I doubt its good news for the government.

When do polls close Central European Time?

11 PM, its 10PM GMT and 9PM local time.

<Pedantry>2100 GMT (Iceland doesn't operate summer time)</Pedantry>

BBC says 22.00 GMT.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22320282 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22320282)

Iceland is GMT without DST so they close at 9PM in Iceland.

At 6PM 53.4% had in the Southwest, down from 59.1% in 2009, so it still looks like a lower participation rate, but the difference is not as great as in the morning.

At the moment it looks like participation will be lower than in 2009 in 5 out of 6 constituencies, but higher in NE which is really good news for PP.

There has been seriously bad weather in Iceland and the small rural roads are not going to be open in the evening (its Saturday and there is no one to keep them open).

Because of the weather it will take extra time to collect the rural votes and the final result is likely to be delayed until Sunday afternoon. But there should be a prognosis right after the polls close, because the small isolated places doesn't affect the overall result much.

14 procent have voted before election day, that's 34 051 - 4 457of which are from abroad. The high number of mailed in votes also complicates the counting since they have to be distributed to the relevant constituencies and checked for double voting.

According to Swedish journalist Anders Svensson, who lives in Iceland and has a blog about the country, the polls close at 10PM Icelandic time and 12PM Swedish time (ie. Central European time), this means 11PM GMT with DST (UK time).

So now I don't know :P I was certain BBC was right, but maybe the BBC simply forgot that Iceland doesn't have DST?

Confirmed. BBC is wrong.

First prognosis at 11.15PM GMT with DST - 00.15 CET with DST. Final result should be announced around seven hours later, the bad weather has hit Iceland later than expected, so that should speed things up.

Icelands national TV station RUV has this exit poll.

IP 27,9
PP 24,5
BF 6,7
SDA 14,6
LG 10,0
Pirates 5,5

Democracy Watch 2,8
Right Greens 2,6
Dawn 2,6
Households Party 1,3%
Rainbow 0,5

So only six parties, as expected, and the Pirates may be cheated out of representation with a strong PP showing in rural constituencies, this effect will probably also make PP as big as IP with this difference.

With 9,5% counted its:
 
IP 26,1%
PP 24,5%
SDA 12,4%
LG 9,5%
BF 7,0%
Pirates 6,4%
Dawn 4,6%
Households Party 4,5%
Democracy Watch 2,8%
Right Greens 1,5%
 

Its interesting that both Dawn and the Households Party are so close to the threshold in these first numbers, but it is probably a skewed sample.

83,3% voted, so the fear of a very low turnout was unfounded.

politicus thanks for all the work you've done in this thread!

What's the source you're using to see the electoral returns?

The newspaper Morgunbladid. The numbers are at 15,6% at the moment.

http://www.mbl.is/frettir/ (http://www.mbl.is/frettir/)

The exit poll is at www.ruv.is (http://www.ruv.is)

At 17,1% counted the seat distribution is:

IP 19
PP 17
SDA 9
LG 9
BF 5
Pirates 4

So there is no centrist PP-SDA-BF majority. I hope this changes.

Surprisingly IP doesnt need levelling seats, while PP does. This is contrary to what everyone had expected.

Well at 31% the pirates are out, so the centrist majority is back, but IP just needs one more to block the constitution.

IP 21
PP 18
SDA 10
LG 8
BF 6

Thanks!

At 57.8%, the seat distribution is the same than at 31%

At 71.9%, PP has gained a seat from IP, so the distribution is now:

IP 20
PP 19
SDA 10
LG 8
BF 6

Looks solid for a PP-SDA-BF coalition at this point.

Should improve for PP, worsen for the left, given the outstanding areas.

Counted votes by area:
Reykjavik North: 96% (IP leads PP 24-17)
Reykjavik South: 98% (IP leads PP 27-17)
Southwest: 53% (IP leads PP 32-22)
Northwest: 55% (PP leads IP 36-24)
Northeast: 57% (PP leads IP 33-22)
South: 82% (PP leads IP 35-28)

Result at 80,6%

IP 26,3      20 (18+2)
PP 24,5     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9   10  (8+2)
LG 11,3      8  (6+2)
BF 8,4         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  0

Households Party 3,1
Dawn  3,0
Democracy Watch 2,5
Right Greens 1,7
Rainbow 1,1

Humanists 0,1
People Front of Iceland 0,1
Rural Party 0,1
Sturla Jonsson 0,1

Its the first time since 1931 that the two major Icelandic left wing parties get below 25% combined.

I think this result  dooms the constitution bill. IP only need 3 extra votes to block it, and there will always be a couple of PP right wingers or fishing lobby stooges willing to join them, even if SDG is willing to compromise with the left.

Result at 95,0%

IP 26,7      19 (18+1)
PP 24,3     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9    9  (8+1)
LG 10,9       7 (6+1)
BF 8,4         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  3  (0+3)

I see than Murphy's Law has striken again.

Counted votes by area:
Reykjavik North: 97% (IP leads PP 23-16)
Reykjavik South: 98% (IP leads PP 27-17)
Southwest: 98% (IP leads PP 31-22)
Northwest: 68% (PP leads IP 37-24)
Northeast: 98% (PP leads IP 35-23)
South: 97% (PP leads IP 35-28)

Okay, thats isolated West Fiord Areas missing, this might take some time.

Given than they are isolated, it's important to wait them. I would suppose isolated areas to have lopsided results. I also suppose than Pirates aren't popular there, so, they are at risk of falling under threshold.

Result at 97,7%

IP 26,7      19 (18+1)
PP 24,4     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9    9  (8+1)
LG 10,9       7 (6+1)
BF 8,2         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  3  (0+3)

Final result

IP 26,7      19 (18+1)
PP 24,4     19 (19+0)
SDA 12,9    9  (8+1)
LG 10,9       7 (6+1)
BF 8,2         6  (3+3)
Pirates 5,1  3  (0+3)
Dawn 3,1
Households Party 3,0
Democracy Watch 2,5
Right Green 1,7
Rainbow 1,1
Rural Party 0,2
Peoples Front of Iceland 0,1
Humanists 0,1
Sturla Jonsson 0,1

Blanks 2,2

Thats more than 4.000 voting blank - likely to protest against the state of Icelandic politics, only 10% say they trust the politicians in polls.

Guess one can call this a "thumpin'"...

Yeah, SDA lost 56.7% of its 2009 following and LG lost 49.8% of their support from last time. For comparison IP only lost 35.2% of their 2007 support in 2009.

Politics aint fair, but then we already knew that :P

This result should make SDG the new prime minister, he has got an equal number of seats to IP and he is "the man in the middle" and can chose a centrist government if he wants to. IPs bargaining position is too weak to claim it despite getting the most votes.

If any of you guys have some spare time it would be interesting to see how the seats would have been distributed under the constitution bill rules = Iceland as one constituency and no threshold, so 1/63 gives you a seat.

Its interesting what changed the trend. It looked like the Left was gaining and IP/PP was down at 48-49 + both according to DVs readers and observers Katrin Jakobsdottir and Arnason were good in the debates, while Benediktsson was pretty bad. SDG was also good in the debates, but I would still have expected IP to go down a bit. But maybe the expectations to Benediktsson are just so low, so he didnt dissapoint anybody...

Still its hard to tell, because we didnt get a second half of the week poll. Maybe the Lefts moment was already halting before the debates and then didnt pick up.

D'Hondt?

IP 18
PP 16
SDA 8
LG 7
BF 5
Pirates 3
Dawn 2
Households 2
DW 1
Right Greens 1

One seat for every completed 2803 votes.

Thx. I was too lazy to do it. Guess it doesnt change the balance that much, its just more spread out. Still its obvious why PP doesnt like it.

Right wing: RG + IP = 19 - same as IRL

Centrists: PP + Households + BF + DW = 24 - 25 IRL

Left: SDA + LG + Pirates + Dawn = 20 - 19 IRL

Awful. Just awful.

No less than 27 new MP, same as in 2009. 12 of them from PP, 4 BF, 2 Pirates.

Jóhanna María Sigmundsdóttir (20), chairwoman of Young Farmers and PPer is the youngest MP ever.
()

Only 25 women, down from 27.

Participation rates were a bit lower in Reykjavik than in the country areas, which is part of the explanation why SDA fared so badly. Its usually higher in Reykjavik, especially with bad wather as this time.

NW 83,6 percent
NE 83,4 percent
SW 82,4 percent
South 81,8 percent

Reykjavík North 78,9 percent
Reykjavík South 80,1 percent

.

Looking at the parties best areas:

PP

NW     35,2
NE      34,6
South 34,5

SW 21,5
Reykjavik N. 16,8
Reykjavik S. 16,4

As expected a strong rural/urban difference, but actually pretty good in the suburbs and decent in Reykjavik.

LG

NE                15,8
Reykjavik N. 15,7
Reykjavik S. 12,1

NE     8,5 #
SW    7,9
South 5,9

# Rainbow got 4,5% in the NW compard to 1,1% nationally because of the native son effect, since its founder hardcore eurosceptic and former Minister for Fishing and Agriculture Jon Bjarnason is from the area. Had he stayed in LG he would have gotten one of the 8 constituency seats with 13% to the two partys combined.

There is a clear difference between uber-rural, conservative Southern Iceland and the strong leftist tradition of the fishing ports of Northern Iceland combined with students from the University of Akureyri (in NE) making NE their best area. Otherwise LG is strong in Reykjavik and weak in suburbia/exurbia where leftist values are not in vogue.

The four other major parties are less interesting, so Ill do them later.

SDA

Reykjavik N. 14,3
Reykjavik S. 14,2
SW 13,6

NW 12,2
NE 10,6
S 10,2

SDA is basically an urban party, but its distribution is more even than normally because BF "stole" so many of their voters in Greater Reykjavik

Weakest in the South for the same reasons as LG. NE is sligthly worse than NW because Left Greens get a higher share of the leftist vote in the NE.

BF

Reykjavik S. 10,7
Reykjavik N. 10,2
SW 9,2

NE 6,5
NW 4,6
S 4,5

BF is a party of townies nicking well-educated former SDA voters in inner Reykjavik and a little less succesfull in the surrounding areas. The Peoples Party, a citizens party in Akureyri, is one of their allies and it gets them a decent showing in the NE. Not much support in the fishing ports and countryside.

Pirates

Reykjavik N. 6,9
Reykjavik S. 6,2
SW 5,0

S 4,7
NW 3,1
NE 3,0

Party for students and the well educated urban elite in Reykjavik with much weaker support in the rural areas and small towns in the north. Its relatively strong support in the South is due to local hero effect.

The Pirate Party did have one incumbent.

IP

SW 30,7
S 28,3
Reykjavik S. 26,8

NW 24,7
Reykjavik N. 23,4
NE 22,6

IP is the "national party" with a very broad and heterogenous voter coalition, so its more difficult to explain the differences. But its strongest among middle class voters in suburbia and the conservative country areas and small towns in the South with Vestmanna Islands being a particular stronghold. 

Reykjavik S. being better than N. could be because they have moved middle class areas to the South this year (they change the border before each election to make them equal in size), since Southern Reykjavik is generally more working class than the north, but IP has historically a significant working class support in Reykjavik, so its hard to say.

IP is a little weaker in the north where there are fewer centre-right voters and they are more likey to vote PP due to the coop/egalitarian tradition of the rural north. Fishermen who own their own boat is the IP core up there.

Yes, Birgitta Jonsdottir, their founder.

Not sure why you posted that?

How much would people say that the Independence Party has in common with Fianna Fáil?

A great deal, but there is also some differences.

Pro
- Its nationalist and has its roots in a national liberation struggle
- Conservative, but in a broad tent way
- Build on patron/client networks
- Fairly corrupt
- Sees itself as the national party of its homeland contrary to other "special interest"/class parties

Con
- Eurosceptic
- Mainly urban
- Has Libertarian elements

From what I'm reading here, I'd have said that FF might have more in common with PP (at least in terms of where the types of area where their rural vote is coming from).

PPs social base is close to the FF core and their agrarian populism would fit well in FF. But the traditional position of FF in Irish politics as the big "national party" is much closer to the role of IP in Iceland. And PPs adherence to Social Liberalism in the tradition of Scandinavian peasant parties is quite different from FF.  

Ireland and Iceland are both formerly oppressed island nations with a strong sense of nationalism, a dominant centre-right and established churches haunted by sex scandals, but apart from the obvious dissimilarity in size there are also some pretty clear differences between the two countries, among them the concept of "urban" and the dominance of the capital. In Iceland people in large fishing ports identify as urban vs. the countryside around them and this made some types of people who would have identified as rurals in Ireland join Reykjavik against the farmers in PP.
The sheer size of Reykjavik means that a rural/small town based party could never become the dominant political force in Iceland as FF did in Ireland.

Also Icelands left is different - and stronger - than Irelands with a Left Socialist party being bigger than their SDs in most of the postwar era and keeping SD to the left for fear of losing support if they drifted towards the center, while Irish Labour is more of a Social Liberal party than a genuine leftist party. This left Social Liberalism as a vacant position for PP to use for catching urban voters leaving IP as the only "pure" right wing party. A four party system generates a different dynamic than a three party system.

Fail.

???

That's my comment of the election results.

Okay, I assume you think it was the voters that failed, but you could also say that the SDA failed in many ways despite their success in stabilizing the economy, and SDs are rarely rewarded solely for being good and prudent managers of the economy.

They promised a new Iceland, putting hundred ships in the water were most of them sunk. Their worst mistake was wasting an enormous amount of time and energy trying to get Iceland to join the EU (in a record 18 months, no less..), while every sane observer of Icelandic society and the attitudes of ordinary folks knew this was never going to get a majority, even if the EU hadnt been against Iceland in the Icesave twist and the "macrill war" with EU-fishermen.

If SDA had focused solely on economic stabilization and getting a new and more democratic constitution implemented, they probably would have won despite the austerity measures.

Now they are left with bitter fights over what went wrong and who to blame.

"Fail" is the only word that comes to my mind. I haven't really elaborated on that, and honestly I don't think I even want to. It is just so disappointing on so many levels that forgetting and moving on is the best solution.

This election raises the question what kind of party system is likely to develop in Iceland in the future.

No less than 15 parties participated in the election and only six of them managed to get any seats.

Four of the parties got almost zero support and are therefore irrelevant. Small left wing fringe groups like the Peoples Front of Iceland will continue to exist, but they are going nowhere.

The parties that originated in the Constitution Council - Dawn and Democracy Watch - are already fighting bitter feuds over whose fault it was, that they didn't get into the Althing. Most of the people mobilized in those movements had no experience with politics before and they are likely to disappear back into anonymity again. Whether the constitution will get through in a watered down version or – more likely – the status quo will remain, I think the citizens movement as a political factor is dead. Its time has simply past and the frantic energy unleashed in 2008/09 has gone.

The only effect Rainbow had was causing LG to lose an otherwise 100% safe constituency seat in the NW, and I think the party will be closed now that LG is back in opposition. There is simply no point in having a small europhobic left wing party in opposition to a bigger eurosceptic left wing party with otherwise almost identical policies!

The Households Party as a protest movement of homeowners will also die off, but its core of disgruntled IP moderaters and centrists is a group that could potentially form the basis for a new party.

Like the Liberals last time the Right Greens had their shot, but failed miserably and will be dissolved. Next time we will likely see yet another party trying to copy the Norwegian PP formula: Low taxes, populism and xenophobia. But Icelands tax-level is lower than mainland Scandinavia and IP already has a low tax message + they lack the Muslim immigrants to create Islamophobia. Their Eastern Europeans and Filipinos are too easy to integrate to create enough tension for an anti-immigration message. All the other Nordic countries have strong right wing populist parties, but I think the lack of Muslims and the lower tax level will make it hard for them to be successful in Iceland. Faux environmentalism clearly didn't do the trick.

The Pirates will probably be largely irrelevant in the new Althing and I doubt they can make the 5% threshold next time, their basis is simply too small. They got in because young leftists were disappointed with LGs participation in implementing the austerity policies and were looking for an alternative, but this element will be missing in 2017.

This leaves Iceland with a 5 party system, that I think could be pretty stable.

Left:

LG: Socialist, urban/rural mix and eurosceptic

SDA: Socialdemocratic, urban and europhile


Liberals:

PP: Rural, pro-development, eurosceptic

BF: Urban, green, europhile

BF clearly fills a void in the political landscape and has a clear edge towards PP, so I think they are here to stay.


Conservatives:

IP will remain a very strong party, but the question is if the moderate europhiles will leave and form their own party. So far they have stayed because they hope to take over the party with its extremely strong political brand, but this looks hopeless and maybe the people around ex prime minister Thorstein Pallsson will realize this after HBK takes over the party, which will happen sooner or later.
At least this is where the open sloth is in Icelandic politics.
So it could develop into a six party system with conservatives also divided along the EU-cleavage.

IP: Urban/rural mix, conservative, eurosceptic

”IP light”: Suburban/urban, moderate, europhile

Well, with this result, it's just "back to normal" for Iceland. No surprise, when you look at the structure of this country: An isolated island with only 300,000 inhabitants, most of whom know and/or are related to each other, with an agricultural tradition (in this case fishing), but still fairly rich - in short: Every Conservative's biggest dream.

It's a miracle that leftist parties even exist on this island.

It was far from back to normal.

Two new parties in parliament and a massive victory to a Liberal party turned populist and promising to take on the international financial establishment with a daring blackmail manouvre. Combine that with the historically dominant IP getting their seond worst election in history + SDA & LG getting the worst combined result for the two major leftist parties since 1931. Thats hardly normal.

Iceland may be isolated historically, but modern Iceland is very globalized. Almost the entire educated elite has studied abroad, many in the US and Britain, and they travel and work overseas more than most nations. Its isolated in the same way NZ is isolated, only with cheaper airfares and shorter travel time to the outside world.

Fishing is not agriculture. Its a very capitalist business that creates sharp divides between the owners of the big trawlers and the fishermen having to do hard and dangerous work in the North Atlantic, and fish processing factories are tiresome and menial work. So you get a strong working class identity and therefore also a solid leftist tradition, which you can see reflected in the difference between the rural South and the NE and NW constituencies even in this election.

Status after all the party leaders visited President Grimsson yesterday:

- IP recommends an IP + PP government (no surprise there)
- Pirates don't want to join a government
- No one else has declined to govern or said which combinations they prefer (at least not officially)

- LG, SDA, PP and BF recommends that SDG gets to be the investigator with the right to seek out government possibilities, Benediktsson recommended himself as the leader of the biggest party.

Grimsson has stated that he wants a government with broad support in the population, hinting that he doesn't like PP + IP with only a little over 50% support among voters.

SDG has said that their plan for lowering household debt is non-negotiable, and this is going to be the big hurdle since none of the other party's like it. The second hurdle is who is going to be Prime Minister. Benediktsson is toast if he doesn't get it, since all IP leaders before him have been PMs, but its not likely that SDG will accept this. A halfway shift after two years is possible, but given that SDG has other options he may not accept this.

The interesting thing now is if the left will cave in more than Benediktsson is willing to do. At least SDG will be 100% certain to be PM if he goes left.

Arnason has refused to step down as SDA leader after fierce internal criticism for not delivering on any of the party's three big election promises from 2009: Finishing the EU negotiations, a new, just fishing quota system and a new constitution. He is also getting a lot of flack for not using Johanna Sigurdardottir in the campaign - which probably also was a mistake, thousands of people came to bid her farewell and covered the square before her office in red roses, so she is still highly popular.
He may be tempted to join a PP led government to silence his critics, even if the prize is going to be very high.
 

Grimsson has made SDG the investigator, as expected. SDG has decided to talk to all the parties  instead of focusing on IP.

A small disclaimer to my prediction about the new party structure. Dawn and the Households Party got over 2,5% of the votes, so they qualify for public party financing. Its not big money, around 150.000 US dollars over 4 years, but it increases the chance of them hanging in there and getting on the ballot next time. But I still think they are doomed.
Democracy Watch missed the cut by a razor thin margin getting 2,46%, so maybe that will increase the likelyhood of a Dawn/DW fusion, but I doubt it, too much bad blood between them.

EDIT: Since the object is to build a majority coalition between parties with very different agendas and goals the Icelandic government formation process often takes a long time. Before 1991 it was not uncommon to use a couple of months, but nowadays its generally done within a forthnight.

Ok, I stand corrected on many issues, but I think it's still obvious that Iceland is no fertile ground for leftist parties. So, it's indeed "back to normal" with regard to Iceland not having a left-wing government.

You do have to wonder what hopes the new conservative government (whatever it looks like) would have of re-election itself; this may just be the appearance of normality(ish) rather than an actual return to it.

Well, first of all it is still far from certain that Iceland will get a "Conservative" government. A Social Liberal-Social Democratic coalition is still a possibility. It would in many ways make a lot more sense.

But if Iceland do get a Conservative-Social Liberal government I think its pretty certain that an IP-PP coalition will not get reelected.

They have made numerous promises they cant deliver on. A well-known political journalist in Iceland gave them 100 days before the crowds will start to demonstrate outside the Althing (as they did after the crash) and demand their resignation. Dunno if that's an exaggeration, but its not totally unlikely.

Primary campaign promises:
 
IP: Better welfare with lower taxes - because lower taxes will create a much wealthier society, so the government will be able to make everything so much better = classic populism with very high BS factor.

PP: Saving homeowners by cutting their mortgages by 20% paid for by forcing foreign creditors to fork out the cash if they don't want their assets in Iceland de facto confiscated by heavy taxation.
Economists doubt this plan will generate the necessary money, or that the creditors will accept the blackmail. Furthermore they say it will create massive inflation.

So big disappointment either way, and also big disappointment if the two parties decide to drop both plans because they each hate each others "magic recipe".

Besides IP is in no fit state to govern. Its a house divided with a manipulative former PM still called "chairman" by the party right wing and controlling one of the country's biggest media who is trying to rule the party by proxy. Add an extremely weak leader with a deputy that's much more popular, but cant decide whether she wants to topple him and a europhile moderate wing that would rather work with the SDA than engage in all this populist nonsense, a spoonfull of crazy libertarians and Christian Right types and a plethora of clientilistic networks all wanting to get a piece of the action they have been denied for four years. Then you got a recipe for disaster.  

Then there is the problem that the two partys have an equal number of seats in parliament, so who gets to be top dog?
PP sees their electoral victory as the big chance to become the dominant party in Iceland and wants to head the government, while IP thinks its their God given right to rule Iceland and wont accept that their leader plays second fiddle, even if its a guy like Benediktsson that nobody really respects.
 
So no matter who gets to be Prime Minister the other party will try to undermine him almost from day one.

I think its a safe bet that such a government wont get reelected, but I also think the PP leadership knows this and may hesitate to chose this combination if they can get the centrist parties to compromise on EU and go along with the "extortion scheme", perhas in a watered down version. And an SDA leadership under severe pressure from internal critics may just be desperate enough to do this.

The latest development is that prominent IPers have been suggesting the party start talks with SDA and BF to "rid the nation of the debt reduction botched Progressive Party" as one of them put it.

IP considers SDGs decision to talk to the parties in alphabetical order a grave insult (IP has D, so they are only third - after SDA and the Pirates) and apparantly the talks today went badly.

This may all be tactical stuff, but if both the big centre-right parties start courting SDA, this might but them in a strong position and end in a more leftist government program than expected.

Still IP would have to drop their flat tax and accept finishing the EU talks to have any chance with SDA and their right wing would hate that.

EDIT: Birgitta Jonsdottir from the Pirates has said that she thinks its going to be a minority government with PP and possibly "some minor parties" (PP - BF?) and that this would "be good for parliamentary cooperation" marking a clear break with "the old Iceland".

A PP minority government supported by the centre-left would be a sensible option given how hard it will be to form a functioning coalition.

EDIT:EDIT: Apparently Jonsdottir wants the minority government to be temporary while SDG tries to execute his "extortion-scheme" against the foreign creditors. Afterwards there should be a new government formation.

This 32 seat coalition is actually the hottest rumour among Icelandic journalists and, apparently, nervous IP insiders.

SDG has met twice with Katrin Jakobsdottir and his long negotiations with her has made IP nervous.

So Rod I am curious about why you thought about this particular combo?

Its unusual in that it combines two green parties with development friendly PP and two liberal/centrist with the left wing, also two euro-sceptic with the most EU-friendly party. But its on the table because LG and BF (and Pirates) are the parties willing to try to put pressure on the creditors. SDA has apparently turned this down.

But then again it may just be a tool to pressure IP, but I just remembered your post and wanted to ask you why you thought about it.

EDIT: SDG has said on facebook that "formal government negotiations" are likely to start this week-end, but he wont reveal which parties are involved.

SDG has decided to form a government with IP, since they have agreed on a plan for relieving household debt. So either he just used the negotiations with the left to put pressure on IP, or he couldn't agree with Katrin Jakobsdottir on the environmental policy after all. Probably a little of both.

Negotiations about details and portfolios to start today.

Still, the whole process has left a lot of bitterness in IP and this government will likely not be very stable. I predict lots of infighting and quarrel.

It will be interesting to see exactly how they are going to treat the foreign creditors and what is going to happen with the constitutional process (its likely dead, but who knows).

The Icelandic EU application obviously goes in the dustbin now.

One of the things IP has critized PP for is their lack of experience, with only one MP having been in parliament for more than 4,5 years (their deputy who got in parliament 2007), but this is actually what I like about them. No one is left from the 1995-2007 era and, as far as I can tell, no one in the new PP group has been involved in any "affairs".

Unfortunately you cant say the same about the IP group and PP will be under a lot of pressure in this government.

So IP, who got more votes, will accept to sit in a government topped by PP, who got less, while they hate each other ? This is gonna be fun watching...

On the other hand, it's a disaster for absolutely nothing at all will be done by this particular government to change anything in Icelandic society, political landscape, or anything.

At least one thing will change. This government means full speed ahead for using Icelands natural energy resources without caring too much about nature and wilderness areas. This will accelerate the industrialization of Iceland. They will build a big aluminum smelter at Heluvik and more geothermic areas will be used for industries with high power demand.

Economic growth will be their no. 1 priority and what might save this coalition is that the business community has a huge interest in keeping it alive and will put pressure on especially IP to keep it going.

Still I think IP cant stay 100% loyal. Strategically Benediktsson is in a difficult position. If he doesn't become Prime Minister next time he is finished in politics. So he needs the government to become a success while getting most of the glory for its successes and preferably discredit PP, so IP becomes far bigger than PP in 2017.

His only alternative is to challenge his own right wing and moderate IP enough to work with SDA after the next election, and he is too weak to do that.

Rumour has it that HBK despite her lack of national and international experience is going to be neutralized as foreign minister, so she will be abroad much of the time and that will make it a bit easier for him.

Still, I think that Benediktsson is in a pretty hopeless situation.

Pirate captain Birgitta Jónsdóttir sums up the faith of the Icelandic left wing in the New Statesman:

"They clean up the vomit after the cocaine party of the neocons, who go into rehab and then come back to reap the benefits."

http://www.newstatesman.com/austerity-and-its-discontents/2013/05/why-has-iceland-returned-politicians-who-caused-their-crisis (http://www.newstatesman.com/austerity-and-its-discontents/2013/05/why-has-iceland-returned-politicians-who-caused-their-crisis)

The rehab image is fitting for PP, but I am less sure IP has been properly treated.

Nearly a month after the election Iceland finally gets a new government, which will take office tomorrow at 15 after being presented to the President.

IP and PP have agreed to:

- Ax the planned hotel VAT increase from 7 to 14%.
- Stop the EU-membership talks and don't open them again unless a majority of voters approve of this in a referendum. (which observers doubt they will hold)
- Cut the catch tax and ax it from 2014.

More unspecified tax cuts to follow.
They haven't agreed to cut mortgages, this will only be decided after negotiations with the foreign creditors.
No decision regarding the aluminum smelter in Heluvik (which is a big surprise).
They will negotiate a solution about the constitution with the opposition and put a stop to "trench war politics".

So basically they haven't agreed on any of the hard stuff!!

Prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson
Minister of finance Bjarni Benediktsson

IP gets to nominate the Speaker in the Althing and 5 ministers, PP gets 4 ministers initially, but 1 more down the road (strange compromise).

IP gets Minister of the Interior, Culture & Education, Healthcare, Industry and Commerce.

PP gets Foreign Affairs, Social Works and Fishing and Agriculture (incl. the Environment). They don't ax the Environmental Ministry, but the fact that it doesn't get it own minister, but is placed under agriculture and fishing speaks volume.

The Welfare Department is still one unit, but gets two ministers for Health and Social Work respectively and since they are from different parties this spells trouble IMO. 

So no Foreign Ministry to HBK. Will be interesting to see her new portfolio. Too bad for BB that he couldnt send her abroad.

New government. Six men and three women. None of them have been ministers before, which is the first time that ever happens in Iceland. HBK haven't even been MP before, but her background as former Reykjavik mayor fits well with being Minister of the Interior.

Prime Minister: Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (38), PP

Minister of Foreign Affairs: Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson (44), PP
()

Fishing, agriculture and environment: Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson (51), PP
()

Social Minister: Eygló Harðardóttir (40), PP
()

Minister of Finance: Bjarni Benediktsson (43), IP

Interior: Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir (46), IP

Culture and Education: Illugi Gunnarsson (45), IP
()

Industry and trade: Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir (45), IP
()

Health: Kristján Þór Júlíusson (55), IP
()

Speaker Einar K. Guðfinnsson (57), IP
()

As far as I know none of them have been involved in corruption. But I will try to check that when I get the time.

Árnadóttir is a right winger and will put pressure on getting the big infrastructure projects through even if its not actually agreed yet. industry and trade is a relatively "heavy" post to her.

There is no specific department for relations to the creditors and the fiscal markets as was expected, so it will be the the foreign ministry that gets those negotiations.