Parliamentary Elections, 30 November 2024

On 30 November 2024, Iceland  held snap parliamentary election after the Prime Minister dissolved parliament on 13 October 2024 (Reuters 2024). Members of Iceland’s unicameral parliament are elected using a multi-seat constituency system of proportional representation. Any political party must have at least 5 per cent of the vote to gain a seat in parliament. Iceland’s 63 MPs serve terms of four years (IFES n.d.). The responsible election management body is the National Electoral Commission (NEC) which oversees the electoral process and is made up of five main staff members including a managing director and several legal advisers (Íslands.is n.d.a).

Elections are often scheduled during the warmer months to avoid disruption caused by sub-zero temperatures in the country during the winter and concerns arose over a severe winter storm which hit the eastern part of the country. However, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) announced that polling stations would open and close on schedule (generally 09:00 to 22:00; some municipalities have other hours) and counting would start promptly at 22:00 (Íslands.is n.d.b). In some constituencies, voters could not access the polling stations because of snow on the roads, but were asked to come back later and could vote then. The NEC said the delivery of some votes for counting were similarly delayed –  a special 4x4 vehicle was used to transport election materials from more rural areas. Some votes had to be helicoptered to the counting centre by the coastguard because strong winds from the winter storm made the roads impassable (Sigurossen and Adam 2024).

Despite these challenges, voter turnout was 80.18 per cent, consistent with the elections in 2021 which was at 80.09 per cent (International IDEA n.d.a). Although the election saw a near-equal gender distribution among candidates (53 per cent men, 47 per cent women), female representation slightly declined post-election from 47.6 per cent to 46 per cent, though it remains well above the regional average (31.8 per cent) (Tómas 2024). Iceland’s opposition Social Democrat Alliance, won the election, leading to the collapse of the coalition government lead by the Independence party (Sigurossen and Adam 2024). In the 2021 Icelandic parliamentary elections, a historic milestone was achieved as 33 women were elected, surpassing the number of men in the parliament. However, following the 2024 elections, the number of women elected has slightly decreased to 29, making up 46 per cent of the total members in parliament (Al Jazeera 2021, IPU 2024).