Update: 18/5, it turns out that our source frettatiminn.is did refer to potential results from poll if there were elections today. Not that the february poll would determine allocation of funding as we initially stated. Icelandic can sometimes be hard to interpret even for a native author.

In Iceland, financial support for political parties is allocated based on how well they do in poll elections. On 1 February 2016. The political parties get 290 Million ISK  (~2.000.000 Euro) in total and is distributed based on their poll results (those above 2.5% support). On top of that the political parties get another 52 Million ISK (~370.000 Euro) according to how many MP’s each party has.

“We did not expect this, we don’t care. Democracy doesn’t revolve around getting loads of money from the governmental funds. A lot of this money goes into advertising campaigns around elections. We  [funded] our campaign at a flea market before the last elections and that was fine. However, we feel we need to be able to pay the salary of our employees. Anything more than that is too much” – Birgitta Jónsdóttir, MP, chairman of the Pirate parliamentary group. 

According to the MMR polls from February the Progressive Party had a support of 12% compared to 24% at the last elections. If these numbers would remain until the elections it will mean a substantial change in funding. That means a net loss of 50% of the annual financial support from the government. That also means that The Icelandic Pirate Party, with 36%, would have money to spare. The political party Bright Future would not fare so well according to this. According to polls they’d around 4% compared to the 8,2% they got in the last elections. 

Featured image: CC-BY-NC-SA, deux yeux

About Júlíus Blómkvist Friðriksson

 

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Update: 18/5, it turns out that our source frettatiminn.is did refer to potential results from poll if there were elections today. Not that the february poll would determine allocation of…