ABSTRACT
Six new parties have been elected to the parliament in Iceland since 2009, with four of them winning seats in the 2017 election. The loss of the dominant status of the four established parties and the increasing momentum of the new parties is a strong indicator that the Icelandic party system has been changing since the economic collapse. It remains to be seen whether such changes are transitory or permanent and whether they are directly attributable to the economic collapse or are consequences of a longer trend of adjustment in electoral behaviour in Iceland—which is the topic of this chapter. This topic will be assessed by analysing the status of the four established parties and voters’ partisan loyalties: party identification, party sympathy and party leadership. Furthermore, we analyse whether the impact of these factors on vote choice has decreased after the crisis and instead whether parties’ perceived competence play a bigger role in guiding vote choice. We do this by analysing whether they have changed gradually over time and contrasting their impact before and after the crisis. Our main findings are that partisan allegiances have in general been decreasing since before the crisis but have since the crisis weakened considerably as predictors of vote choice.
