Scandinavian Politics: Norwegian election outcome

For the first time since 1993, a sitting Norwegian government has
retained power after an election. After a desperately close race, which
culminated last night, the coalition of the Labour, Centre and Socialist
Left parties defied some (but not all) poll predictions to win another
parliamentary majority. The four opposition parties of the right were
left disappointed - and utterly split.

The undisputed winner was Labour, the party of the prime minister, Jens
Stoltenberg, which increased its vote significantly. Its coalition
partners both lost votes. The two main parties on the right, the
Conservatives and the Progress Party, both increased their scores, yet
failed to shift the government. Progress, yet again, achieved its
best-ever result, cementing its status as Norway's second-biggest party.
What let the right down was the disastrous performance of the Liberals,
who lost all their gains from 2005 and were left with just a couple of
seats. Their fall below the threshold for getting additional mandates
probably cost the right the election; the four opposition parties
actually won more votes than the left-of-centre trio. The Liberals'
leader, Lars Sponheim, who lost his parliamentary seat, tearfully resigned.

However, even if it had won two more seats, and thus a parliamentary
majority, it is not clear that the right could have formed a government.

Two parties had bound their own future behaviour very tightly with
self-proclaimed, and incompatible, "guarantees". Progress said that it
would not support any government from which it was excluded. The
Liberals (with only slightly less unequivocal backing from the Christian
Democrats) said that they would not support a government that had any
sort of reliance on Progress. Neither Progress nor the the Liberals will
now have to partake in a chicken game, to see which (if either of them)
would back down. But, if we assume that voters like to know what
government they are voting for, the price in votes that the right paid
for these games was surely steep. The Conservatives' attempts to keep
alive the possibility of governing with the Liberals to their left,
and/or Progress to their right, only added to the uncertainty. In the
last week of the campaign, these efforts pretty much collapsed into chaos.

Here are those near-final results in full.

Socialist Left 6.1% of the vote (-2.7% compared to 2005), 11 seats (-4)
Labour 35.5% (+2.8%), 64 (+3)
Centre 6.2% (-0.3%), 11 (+/-)

Liberals 3.8% (-2.1), 2 (-8)
Christian Democrats 5.6% (-1.2%), 10 (-1)
Conservatives 17.2% (+3.1), 30 (+7)
Progress 22.9% (+0.9), 41 (+3)

turnout 73.7% (-3.7% - the lowest since 1927)

More analysis will follow in the coming days.

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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