Parliamentary elections were held in Iceland on 12 May 2007. The Independence Party remained the largest party in the Althing, winning 25 of the 63 seats. Following the elections, a coalition government was formed by the Independence Party and the Social Democratic Alliance, with Geir Haarde continuing as Prime Minister.
Background
Six parties participated in the elections: the two parties of the then government coalition, the right wing Independence Party and the centrist Progressive Party, and the opposition parties in the Alþingi, the Social Democratic Alliance, the Left-Green Movement and the Liberal Party; one new party, the environmentalist Icelandic Movement – Living Country also participated in the elections. The Fighting Union, an advocacy party for disabled and senior citizens' rights, failed to present lists of candidates in due time in five out of six constituencies, and therefore decided to withdraw from the elections.
Constituencies
There are six constituencies in Iceland. According to the Law on Parliamentary Elections (nr.24/2000), each constituency is granted 9 seats decided by proportional voting in the constituency, and finally 9 special Leveling seats (either 1 or 2 per constituency, depending on their population size) will work to adjust the result, so that proportionality is also ensured according to the overall number of party votes at the national level. The number of constituency seats shall however be adjusted ahead of the next election, if the fraction of residents with suffrage per available seat in the constituency became more than twice as big in the latest election, when comparing the constituency with the highest fraction against the one with the lowest fraction. In that case a constituency seat shall travel from the constituency with the lowest figure to the one with the highest figure, until the result of the equation comply with the rule. However, the total number of seats (including leveling seats) must never become less than six in any constituency. The box below display the number of available seats in each constituency at the 2007 parliamentary election.
Method for apportionment of constituency seats
The available constituency seats are first distributed to each party according to the D'Hondt method, so that proportional representation is ensured within each of the constituencies. The next step is to apportion these party distributed seats to the candidates within the party having the highest "vote score", after counting both direct candidate votes and their share of party votes in the constituency. In Iceland the "candidate vote system" is that, for each constituency, each party provides a pre-ranked list of candidates beneath each party name (listed according to the preferred order decided by the party), but where the voters voting for the party can alter this pre-ranked order by renumbering the individual candidates and/or crossing out those candidates they do not like, so that such candidates will not get a share of the voter's "personal vote" for the party.