Early parliamentary elections were held in Iceland on 25 and 26 October 1959.[1] Following the electoral reforms made after the June elections, the Independence Party won 16 of the 40 seats in the Lower House of the Althing.[2]
Electoral reforms
The June 1959 elections had ended with both the Independence Party and the Progressive Party winning 13 seats, despite the IP receiving 42% of the vote to the PP's 27%.[3] The electoral system at the time was rural–urban proportional representation: a lower tier comprised single member constituencies elected using first-past-the-post voting, two-member constituencies elected using party-list proportional representation (party-list PR) and one large multi-member constituency for Reykjavík that 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 existing Borda 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]
^ 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. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
