Pirate Party dominant among young voters

The support for the Pirate Party continues. According to the survey of Fréttablaðið, done at the end of the week, the party would get 29,1% of the votes if  elections were held today and get 19 members of the parliament out of 63. According to the new survey, the party would therefore get five more members of parliament than revealed in the results of the survey of Fréttablaðið from March 10th and 11th.

On the 12th of March, it got heard that Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson had handed Latvia's Minister for Foreign Affairs a letter, saying that the Icelandic government did not intend to resume assession talks with the EU again. Latvia is now chairing the Council of the European Union.

This conduct of Gunnar Bragi is not everywhere well regarded. Yesterday, Fréttablaðið reported that 24% of those who answered in the survey of Fréttablaðið were not happy with the conduct of the minister. A great majority or 6% is not happy with it, on the other hand.

Protesters have gathered three times outside the house of the parliament in order to oppose the conduct of the ruling parties in this matter.

Despite the response of the Icelandic public, the support for other opposition parties does not increase in the new survey. The support for the Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin) and Bright Future (Björt framtíð) is almost the same from one survey to another. A bit fewer now say that they would vote for the Left Green Party than in the survey done earlier in March. However, that difference is not statistically significant.

The Pirate Party is dominant among people under the age of 50. Of the voters taking a stand, about 38% at the age of 18-49 said that they would vote for the Pirate Party if elections were held today. The Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn) is next in line with 20,9% support, but 13% of those who answered in that age group would vote for the Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin).

On the other hand, the Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn) is strongest among those who are 50 years old and older. Of those taking a stand, about 26% of voters of that age said that they would vote for the Independency Party, about 19% that they would vote for the Pirate Party and about 20% that they would vote for the Social Democratic Alliance. Of the five parties, now holding a parliamentary seat, the support for Bright Future is smallest among those who are 50 years old and older, but 7,5% of those who answered in that age group, taking a stand, said that they would vote for Bright Future.

"We need to ask ourselves how to form a government," Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, a member of parliament for the Pirate Party, says when asked if he is ready to take the responsibility, possibly entailing such a support for the Pirate Party. For example by becoming á minister after elections. 

"I don't think it's natural that two, possibly three parties preventing the government from falling, should decide how the government is formed," Helgi Hrafn  also says. He wants to separate the legislative power and the executive power. "And making the process of selecting a government more democratic, so it's not the top members of the parliament who get the executive power along the legislative power, Helgi Hrafn says.  

He says that he want a rule that ministers are not members of the parliament at the same time. "But that being said, then I take the responsibility that I've been given. But I'm not interested in it until those questions have been appropriately answered," he says.

Helgi Hrafn says that he is greatly surprised by the results of the surveys. 

The Swede Rickard Falkvinge agrees to that. He is the founder of the international Pirate Movement. Falkvinge says that when the Pirate Party had elected members of the parliament in 2013, he had expected that the movement here in Iceland would become bigger. 

"But having a party ten years after its foundation, with a support enough to get the Prime Minister's Office, that is a much quicker turn of events than I expected, Falkvinge says. Yet, he refers to Helgi Hrafn's words and others', pointing out that one should look humbly at the support. "It is very easy to simply take the support for granted. And then you're in the same position as the four old parties in Iceland," he says.

Falkvinge points out the term is now halfway through. It is a big question if such a survey leads to the same results in the elections two years later. "We've seen it fail in other countries and therefore I put emphasis on being humble towards these results," Falkvinge says.