Sunday 26 April 2009

And the (early) results from the Icelandic jury…

22:23 UTC
Projections from state broadcaster RÚV, based on about 40% of votes counted:
  • Progressive Party: 9 seats (+2)
  • Independence Party: 15 seats (–10)
  • Liberal Party: 0 seats (–4)
  • Civic Movement: 4 seats (+4)
  • Democracy Movement: 0 seats (–)
  • Social Democratic Alliance: 22 seats (+4)
  • Left-Green Movement: 13 seats (+4)
The international observers from the OSCE have declared the elections to be "of the highest standard": they certainly seem to be giving a reasonable result so far.

22:36 UTC
Those predictions seem to be based on rather less than 40% of the vote counted: thanks to the team at The Reykjavík Grapevine, whose Icelandic is far better than mine is, for the correction!

23:44 UTC
No real movement in the projected figures, except maybe the Civic Movement will gain an extra seat at the expense of the Social Democratic Alliance.
Apparently "thousands" of ballot papers have candidate's names struck out, perfectly legitimate in Iceland's "open list" system. The speculation is that the candidates concerned are those that were named as having received campaign donations from corporations during the 2007 elections. The striking out of candidates does not affect the number of seats for each party, although it might affect the individuals who are elected from certain lists and will slow down the count.

01:00 UTC
These projections are from Morgunblaðið, based on 53.6% of votes counted:
  • Progressive Party: 13.2% (+1.5%), 9 seats (+2)
  • Independence Party: 23.4% (–13.2%), 15 seats (–10)
  • Liberal Party: 1.9% (–5.4%), 0 seats (–4)
  • Civic Movement: 8.0% (+8.0%), 5 seats (+5)
  • Democracy Movement: 0.5% (+0.5%), 0 seats (–)
  • Social Democratic Alliance: 32.2% (+5.4%), 21 seats (+3)
  • Left-Green Movement: 20.9% (+6.6%), 13 seats (+4)

01:50 UTC
Anya at NewsFrettir passes on a warning from the National Electoral Commission that the large number of strike-out ballots may mean that the current figures are "giving off the wrong image" of the final result. The reason is that struck out ballots are counted last, and there are clear differences between the parties as to the proportion of ballots having names struck out.

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