Alþingiskosningar - 01.09.1995, Page 6

Preface
After its foundation in 1914 Statistics Iceland became re-
sponsible for compiling and publishing reports on elections
in the country. The first report in 1914 covered general
elections in the period 1908-1914 but two election reports
covering the period 1874-1911 had already been published
in 1882 and 1912. From the beginning the institution has
published its reports on general elections to the Althingi,
presidential elections and referenda in the series Statistics of
Iceland, altogether 32 reports including the present issue.
Since 1930 Statistics Iceland has also compiled reports on
local govemment elections. These appeared in Monthly
Statistics until the institution started to publish them sepa-
rately in the Statistics oflceland series, the first covering the
elections in 1990.
In 1988, Statistics Iceland published in two volumes all
reports that had been compiled on general elections, local
go vernment elections, presidential elections and referenda in
the period 1874-1987, in all 43 reports. Since then reports
have been issued on the presidential elections in 1988, local
government elections in 1990 and the general elections in
1991 and 1995. Asapointofinterestitcanbementionedthat
16 general elections have taken place during the 51-year
period since the foundation of the Icelandic Republic in 1944
until the general elections of 1995. The first of these took
place in 1946, which means that general elections have on the
average been held at an interval of 3 years and 3 months.
The reports on general elections have changed consider-
ably in the course of time, mainly owing to changes in
election laws and in constituencies. As of the report on the
1987 general elections, the reporting changed markedly as a
result of constitutional amendments in 1984 and amend-
ments to the General Elections Act in 1984 and 1987. The
main changes in the report were caused by complicated rules
for allocation of seats that were first applied in 1987 and
necessitated a thorough reporting on how seats are allocated
and final results are rendered. This has also been done in the
present report, which is quite similar in its presentation to the
1987 and 1995 reports. A new feature of this report is a more
detailed account of candidates than before. A special survey
was conducted among candidates for the purpose of supply-
ing data for this publication on the distribution of their
employment, economic activity, occupation and education
as well as breakdown by sex and age. The survey was
designed in such a way as to permit comparison of its results
with those of the regular labour force survey conducted about
the same time (see Chapter 6).
The main sources on which the present report is based are
the following:
1. Statistics on voters on the electoral roll and votes cast are
based on reports submitted by local election boards to
Statistics Iceland.
2. Information on candidate lists and candidates is based
on advertisements by constituency election boards.
3. Information on the employment and education of candi-
dates is based on data collected in the special survey
referred to above.
4. Information on election results and allocation of seats is
based on reports submitted by constituency election
boards to the national election board and on reports
submitted by the latter to Statistics Iceland which in turn
has prepared the actual presentation of the tables.
For Statistics Iceland, the Director has been editor of the
present publication, Guðni Baldursson and Hermann
Þráinsson have been in charge of the data collection, process-
ing and compiling of the report except for the part based on
the candidate survey, which was in the hands of Omar
Harðarson and Lárus Blöndal. Sigurborg Steingrímsdóttir
has been responsible for the lay-out.
Statistics Iceland in September 1995
Hallgrímur Snorrason