No female majority in Icelandic parliament after recount

Iceland does not have a European first. On Sunday it seemed that during the parliamentary elections there for the first time in Europe more women than men were elected, but a recount changed that. After the first results, the country announced that 33 of the 63 parliamentary seats in the Althingi, the Icelandic parliament, went to women. Thirty seats remain.

In northwestern Iceland, according to the first count, only ten more people voted for the Viðreisn, a liberal party, than for the Píratar, the Icelandic variant of the Pirate Party. Given the small difference, a recount was requested, writes national channel RUV. It turned out that Píratar had received twenty more votes – a result that changed the entire national distribution of seats.

Sweden and Finland also close by

Iceland’s largest party, the conservative Independence Party, remained the largest with 16 seats. The current coalition of the Left-Green Movement of premier Katrín Jakobsdóttir, the Independence Party and the Progressive Party, won 37 seats. That means a majority in parliament, and a win: in the previous elections in 2017, the coalition won 35 seats. The cooperation between the three parties is likely to continue.

This year, Iceland was named the country with the most gender equality for the twelfth time by The World Economic Forum (WEF). In Europe, Sweden and Finland are closest to a female parliamentary majority: in Sweden 47 percent of parliamentarians are women, in Finland 46. In countries outside Europe, women have already obtained the majority more often: in Cuba 53 percent are women, in Rwanda 61 per cent. In the previous Icelandic parliamentary elections, 24 women won a seat.

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