Its junior partners in the outgoing government also lost seats: The market-liberal Reform Party fell from 7 to 3 seats, and the social-liberal Bright Future Party fell from 4 to zero seats.
The big winners of the election may be the populist parties (which the Independence Party must now negotiate to try to put together a ruling coalition)::
The Progressive Party, which is similar to the Independence Party but inclined to rural concerns, which retained its 8 seats.
The new Center Party, practically a clone of the Progressive Party, which picked up 7 seats.
And, the People's Party, also new, which combines populism with concerns for the poor and disabled of the country. It gained 4 seats.
While assembling a ruling coalition will be challenging, it could have been much worse for Iceland. A week ago, opinion polls were showing the neo-communist Green-Left Movement in first place.
Wow, they’re just tiny. Only 333k population. My suburban city, the 5 adjacent suburban cities, and one additional nearby suburban city (adjacent to two of the 5) total 393k, significantly more. And our metro area is around 6 million.
Just for comparison purposes.
Yeah, and it’s cold too.
I’m relieved the swine didn’t come in first.
Ind + Center + Prog is one seat short of a majority
People’s = left wing but anti-immigration it looks like, eesh, Pro-EU Reform is other choice to round out a majority coalition.
Iceland my friends, you’ve got too many parties