ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how voters have used the leftright scale over time in Iceland, a stable, multi-party, democratic state. Iceland is a representative democracy and a parliamentary republic with a multi-party system in which the parties line up clearly on the leftright dimension. Icelandic politics the terms left, right, and center are frequently used by both political elites and the general public to describe the political stance of parties, politicians, and policies. The Icelandic National Election Study (ICENES) has been conducted following every parliamentary election since 1983. The Independence Party is consistently furthest to the right, followed by the Progressive Party, then the Social Democratic Alliance (SDA), with the Left Greens being the leftmost party. Of course, in reality, there does not have to be a close alignment between the average voters' self-placement on the leftright scale and placement of the party's true policies or its political leaders, but such a misalignment should be viewed with concern by party leaders.
