The Conservatives got 27.6 percent of the votes nationwide yesterday, up from 19.3 percent in local elections in 2007, according to a count of 70 percent of the votes by the Oslo- based Local Government and Regional Development Ministry. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s Labor, which leads a ruling national coalition, received 32.1 percent, up from 29.6 percent in 2007. The Progress Party fell to 11.2 percent from 17.5 percent.
Campaigning was delayed for two weeks after Anders Behring Breivik bombed the premier’s office and shot 69 people at a Labor Party youth camp near Oslo, which the 32-year-old former Progress Party member said was done to inflict the “greatest possible loss” to Labor. It wasn’t immediately clear if the Conservative-Progress coalition would retain power in the Norwegian capital.
“It seems like the Progress Party is suffering because of what happened on July 22,” Johannes Bergh, a political scientist at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, said before the results. “The fact that you can’t talk about immigration now, the way that they did before the terror attacks, is something that is a problem for the Progress Party.”
The local election, which covers 429 municipalities, has no effect on representatives in parliament or the basis for the government. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2013.
Halvorsen Resigns
The Socialist Left received 4.1 percent, while the Center Party was backed by 7.2 percent, the incomplete results showed. The Liberal Party received 6.3 percent of the votes and the Christian Democrats got 5.9 percent.
Kristin Halvorsen, head of the Socialist Left and the current education minister, announced in a live broadcast that she would step down next year to “renew” the party.
Backing for the Conservative Party, which campaigned for better schools, elderly care and infrastructure spending, rose in part at the expense of the anti-immigration Progress Party, the second-biggest in parliament.
In Oslo, the ruling Conservatives gained six seats to 22 seats, according to a count of 82 percent of the votes. The Progress Party fell five seats to four, casting their ruling coalition in doubt. The Labor Party gained two seats to 20, according to the incomplete count, while the Socialist Left fell two to four seats.
The Liberals were unchanged at five seats, while the Party Red was declined one to two seats, according to the preliminary count. The Christian Democrats lost its one seat, while the Greens gained one seat.
Stian Berger Roesland, the Conservative head of the city council, said in a televised broadcast that he would work for a broad non-socialist coalition to rule the city.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-12/norway-conservatives-labor-gain-in-vote.html