Iceland almost elects majority female parliament

Iceland briefly celebrated the election of a female majority parliament on Sunday, before a recount produced a result just below that milestone for gender parity in the North Atlantic island nation.

The initial vote count saw the female candidates win 33 seats in Iceland’s 63-seat parliament, the Althing, in an election in which the centrist parties made the biggest gains.

Hours later, a recount in west Iceland changed the outcome, leaving female candidates with 30 seats, a tally previously achieved in Iceland’s second most recent election, in 2016. Still, nearly 48% of the total, that it is the highest percentage for women. legislators in Europe.

Only a handful of countries, none of them in Europe, have a majority of female legislators. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Rwanda leads the world with women representing 61% of its Chamber of Deputies, with Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico at or just over 50%. Worldwide, the organization says that just over a quarter of lawmakers are women.

“The female victory remains the great story of these elections,” political professor Olafur Hardarson told RUV radio after the recount.

Iceland’s voting system is divided into six regions and the count in West Iceland was carried out after questions about the number of votes cast. The errors have not been fully explained but are believed to be due to human error.

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The three parties in the outgoing coalition government led by Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir won a total of 37 seats in Saturday’s vote, two more than in the last election, and it seemed likely that they would remain in power.

Opinion polls had suggested a victory for left-wing parties in the unpredictable elections, in which 10 parties competed for seats. But the center-right Independence Party won the majority of the vote, winning 16 seats, seven of them held by women. The centrist Progressive Party celebrated the biggest gain, winning 13 seats, five more than last time.

Before the elections, the two parties formed Iceland’s tripartite coalition government, along with Jakobsdottir’s Green Left Party. His party lost several seats, but kept eight, beating poll predictions.

The three ruling parties have not announced whether they will work together for another term, but given strong voter support, it seems likely. It will take days, if not weeks, for a new government to form and announce.

Climate change had been high on the electoral agenda in Iceland, a glacier-dotted volcanic island nation of some 350,000 people in the North Atlantic. An exceptionally warm summer by Icelandic standards, with 59 days of temperatures above 20 C (68 F), and shrinking glaciers have helped push global warming onto the political agenda.

But that did not appear to have translated into increased support for any of the four left-wing parties that campaigned to cut carbon emissions more than Iceland pledged under the Paris Climate Agreement.

One candidate whose victory was overturned by the recount was law student Lenya Run Karim, a 21-year-old daughter of Kurdish immigrants who ran for the anti-establishment Pirate Party.

“It was a good nine hours,” said Karim, who would have been Iceland’s youngest lawmaker.