The Icelandic Pirate Party has entered Parliament. This is clear, with 95% of the votes already counted, the Icelandic Pirate Party is projected to garner 5.1% of the vote, just above the 5% threshold required to elect members of parliament.
- Emergency Update at 0730 UTC
- Overnight, the vote share for the Icelandic Pirate Party soon fell below the 5% threshold, making entry into Parliament uncertain and contradicting the polls. As of 0730 UTC, with 95% of votes counted, the Pirates were on 5.1%, winning three seats. The text of this article has been updated to reflect current developments.
The Pirate Party's election campaign in Iceland for the Althing, the Icelandic parliament (see photo), was seeing the support rates for the major parties in the polls go up and down. But one thing was consistently evident, the fledgling Pirate Party in Iceland continued to grow in strength, with polls showing a percentage between 6.5% and 9.0% in all recent surveys.
As soon as the Pirate Party's first parliamentary seat was announced from the Southwest Iceland constituency, where the party had received a full 8.3% of the vote, excitement ran high with the Pirates celebrating with a dinner at a chic seafood restaurant in downtown Reykjavik.
Icelanders are something of a phenomenon, even within the rapidly growing Pirate Party movement. The Pirates of Iceland were founded just nine months ago, and they won seats in the Althing today - three seats, according to current projections. That's a speed record (foundation - parliament) by any measure (perhaps even a Guinness World Record).
This success makes the Icelandic Pirate Party the first pirate party in the world to elect members to a national parliament! Hearty congratulations. The goal has been achieved. After this victory, there are no other levels of government where the movement is not represented.
The Icelandic Pirate Party did not start from scratch, however. They were fortunate to have very experienced activists at the founding/startup of the party – such as Birgitta Jonsdottir (of Wikileaks and the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, etc.) and Smári McCarthy (similarly involved in IMMI and other projects). We do not yet know which pirates will take the seats in the Althing – this will depend on the distribution of votes between constituencies and other such parameters.
Regardless, there will certainly be a lot of work to do in the Althing – although Iceland has a very positive view of progressive ideas, few of these ideas have been implemented into legislation. Having pirate legislators in Iceland now may facilitate this legislative implementation. There is a lot of work ahead of them.
But not tonight.
Tonight, we celebrate and I salute with glasses full of rum our Icelandic brothers and sisters in the movement. Well done, very good job!
