The Labor Party has won the parliamentary elections on Monday in Norway around 28% of the votes, according to different projections based on polls at the foot of the urn and the scrutiny of the early vote. The social democratic formation will need the support of all parties of the Red Block (left) for. On the opposite side, the Progress Party (populist right and xenophobic) overcomes the conservatives and becomes the second parliamentary force.
Labor will get a slightly better result to four years ago, according to the projections of the public radiotelevision, the TV2 chain and the newspaper World Gang. Together with their traditional partners, they will add an adjusted absolute majority in the Storting (Parliament), with 87 of the 169 seats, only two more of the necessary ones. Jonas Gahr Store, 65, the prime minister since 2021 – after eight years of governments led by the conservatives – will have to form a coalition executive or continue to rule in a minority, as until now, with the support of the rest of his block formations: the red party (5.1%), socialist left (also 5.1%), the green Easceptic, which loses half of the support compared to the previous elections and stays at 6.8%.
The uncertainty generated by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, both for the imposition of tariffs and for their threats to annex the Danish island of Greenland, have favored the Labor Party, according to many analysts, who consider that many voters have opted for the political experience of Store and the Minister of Economy, Jens Stoltenberg.
The Social Democrats will retain power in Norway (5.6 million inhabitants), a possibility that seemed very distant at the beginning of the year, when the surveys placed them in third position, behind the extreme right and the conservatives. The return to national politics in February of Stoltenberg, former prime minister and former NATO general secretary, was a revulsive and promoted an upward trend for the Labor.
Store, 65, has also benefited from the implosion, last January, of, after the ministers of this training left the Executive for their refusal to adopt three community directives in energy matters. Although Norway is not a member of the EU, it does have access to the single market and is part of the European economic space, so it is obliged to include a large part of the norms approved in Brussels in its legislation.
The central themes of a very polarized electoral campaign have been inflation, taxes, the price of electricity, health, environment and future of the oil and gas industry. The most to the left of the Red Block will sue Store to raise taxes for the highest income in order to finance tax cuts for lower income families and expand public services. The green and the Red Party will also claim that more strict restrictions are imposed on the exploitation of hydrocarbons. Since the sanctions were imposed on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, Norway.
In the block on the right, the ultra -rightist Progress party will add 23.7% of the votes, (compared to 11.6% obtained in 2021), surpassing conservatives, which fall from 20.4% of the harvested support four years ago to 14.8%. Together with its two traditional partners, the Liberal Party (3.7%) and the Christian -democrats (4.1%) will add 82 seats, three less than necessary to reach the absolute majority in Parliament.
The conservative right, headed by Erna Solberg, which was Prime Minister between 2013 and 2021 and leads the party for more than two decades, defended a drastic reduction of taxes and a greater exploitation of gas and oil. The Progress Party, which obtains the best result of its history, in addition to advocating a tax decrease, has based its speech on criticism of immigration.
The debate on the relationship with the European Union. Labor and conservatives, whose leaders are supporters of adhesion to the community club, have preferred to dodge the matter to prevent the future government coalition formation from being hindered, since both in the red and blue block there are favorable parties and contrary to strengthening bonds with Brussels.
The elections have also been marked by the early vote. 47% of voters, just over 1.9 million, have opted to send their ballot by mail. In addition, in a third of the Norwegian municipalities, electoral schools also opened for a few hours this Sunday.
