According to a new opinion poll, conducted by the Fréttabladid newspaper, 36 percent of participants would vote for the center-left Social Democrats and 23 percent would support the Left-Green Movement. Both parties received less support in the 2007 elections.
If there were to be new elections today, the Social Democrats would have 24 MPs elected to parliament, compared to their current 18, and the Left-Greens would have 15 MPs in parliament compared to their current 9, Fréttabladid reports.
The conservative Independence Party would enjoy a support of 29 percent, according to the results of the opinion poll, and have 20 MPs elected to parliament, compared to their current 25. The Independence Party received the most support in the 2007 elections.
“Relative to what has been going on, there are remarkably few changes,” said Ólafur Th. Hardarson, professor of politics. “It is particularly interesting that two of the opposition parties should lose support,” Hardarson commented, referring to the Progressive Party and the Liberal Party, which only seven percent and four percent of participants in the poll would vote for, respectively.
According to these results, the Progressive Party would have four MPs in parliament instead of their current seven, and the Liberal Party would not get a single MP elected to parliament while they currently have four.
Interestingly, although only 41 percent of participants said they supported the coalition-government (compared to 72 percent in February, 2008), the combined electorate of both government parties, the Independence Party and the Social Democrats, stands at 65 percent.
Fréttabladid called 800 voters at random and 30.5 percent of participants were undecided. Hardarson concluded that support for the parties might shift more while the effects of the economic crisis continue to unfold.
Click here to read about the results of a recent opinion poll on EU membership for Iceland.
