Iceland: Political Developments and Data in 2022

Abstract

In 2022, Icelandic politics returned to normal. In the two previous years, Covid‐19 had dominated the political agenda—ideology and politics as normal were largely absent. In the 2021 parliamentary elections, the three‐way coalition of the Left Greens, Independence Party, and Progressive Party (PP) kept its majority in Althingi—the first majority government to do so since the bank crash of 2008. This victory was clearly the result of a successful fight against the epidemic, and the government parties decided to continue their coalition cooperation. In 2022, support for the government and for the government parties went down, just as had been the case for all governments since the financial crisis of 2008. One of the opposition parties, the Social Democratic Alliance, made huge gains in the opinion polls—under a new leadership. Increasing ideological tensions could be observed within the government coalition, which includes both the parliamentary party furthest to the left and furthest to the right.