October 1959 Icelandic parliamentary election
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All 40 seats in the Lower House and 20 seats in the Upper House ofAlthing | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Turnout | 90.37% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
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Iceland portal |
Early parliamentary electionswere held inIcelandon 25 and 26 October 1959.[1]Following the electoral reforms made after theJune elections,theIndependence Partywon 16 of the 40 seats in the Lower House of theAlthing.[2]
Electoral reforms[edit]
The June 1959 elections had ended with both the Independence Party and theProgressive Partywinning 13 seats, despite the IP receiving 42% of the vote to the PP's 27%.[3]The electoral system at the time wasrural–urban proportional representation:a lower tier comprised single memberconstituencieselected usingfirst-past-the-post voting,two-member constituencies elected usingparty-list proportional representation(party-list PR) and one large multi-member constituency forReykjavíkthat also used party-list PR, topped up by an upper tier of eleven seats chosen from a single national compensatory list.[4][5]
The reforms saw the replacement of this rural-urban proportional system with a two-tier party-list PR system; the lower tier now comprised eight multi-member constituencies, all elected using party-list PR.[5][4]Five constituencies elected five members each, two elected six members each and Reykjavík elected 12. The number of seats for Reykjavík was also increased from the prior elections,[5]increasing the overall total in the Lower House from 35 to 40 and in the Upper House from 17 to 20.[6]
The voters’ capacity to change the order of names on the PR lists was greatly reduced compared to prior elections as well; the existingBorda count-based system was now only being used to calculate one-third of the final number of votes deemed to have been received by each candidate, while the party’s unaltered ordering determined the remaining two-thirds.[4]
Results[edit]
Party | Votes | % | Seats | |||||
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Lower House | +/– | Upper House | +/– | |||||
Independence Party | 33,800 | 39.72 | 16 | +3 | 8 | +1 | ||
Progressive Party | 21,882 | 25.71 | 11 | –2 | 6 | 0 | ||
People's Alliance | 13,621 | 16.01 | 7 | +2 | 3 | +1 | ||
Social Democratic Party | 12,909 | 15.17 | 6 | +2 | 3 | +1 | ||
National Preservation Party | 2,883 | 3.39 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
Total | 85,095 | 100.00 | 40 | +5 | 20 | +3 | ||
Valid votes | 85,095 | 98.46 | ||||||
Invalid/blank votes | 1,331 | 1.54 | ||||||
Total votes | 86,426 | 100.00 | ||||||
Registered voters/turnout | 95,637 | 90.37 | ||||||
Source: Nohlen & Stöver |
References[edit]
- ^Dieter Nohlen& Philip Stöver (2010)Elections in Europe: A data handbook,p961ISBN978-3-8329-5609-7
- ^Nohlen & Stöver, p976
- ^Nohlen & Stöver, pp970-976
- ^abcRenwick, Alan (2010). Helgason, Þorkell; Hermundardóttir, Friðný Ósk; Simonarson, Baldur (eds.)."Electoral System Change in Europe since 1945: Iceland"(PDF).Electoral system change since 1945.Archived(PDF)from the original on 4 October 2021.Retrieved4 October2021.
- ^abcNohlen & Stöver, p955
- ^Nohlen & Stöver, pp976-978