June 1959 Icelandic parliamentary election

28 June 1959
All 35 seats in the Lower House and 17 seats in the Upper House of Althing
Turnout	90.63%
Party Leader % Seats +/– Upper House Independence Ólafur Thors 42.49 7 +1 Progressive Hermann Jónasson 27.20 6 0 People's Alliance Hannibal Valdimarsson 15.25 2 −1 Social Democratic Emil Jónsson 12.54 2 0 Lower House Independence Ólafur Thors 42.49 13 0 Progressive Hermann Jónasson 27.20 13 +2 People's Alliance Hannibal Valdimarsson 15.25 5 0 Social Democratic Emil Jónsson 12.54 4 −2 Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Emil Jónsson Social Democratic Emil Jónsson Social Democratic

Politics of Iceland
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Parliamentary elections were held in Iceland on 28 June 1959.^[1] The Independence Party and the Progressive Party both won 13 seats in the Lower House of the Althing.^[2] Following the tie, electoral reforms were introduced and early elections were held in October.

Electoral system

The elections were conducted under rural–urban proportional representation. Twenty-one members were elected in single-member constituencies via first-past-the-post voting, while the remainder were elected using D'Hondt method proportional representation: twelve members in two-member constituencies, eight members in Reykjavík, and eleven from a single national compensatory list. To earn national list seats, a party had to win at least one constituency seat. In constituencies electing two or more members, within the party list, voters had the option to re-rank the candidates and could also strike a candidate out. Allocation of seats to candidates was done using a system based on the Borda count.^[3]

Results

References