Analysis
The ‘red bloc’ is a firm majority in Norway’s parliament
Benefiting from the high turnout alongside Labour were the parties on the parliament’s left flank: the Greens and Rødt (the Red Party), which increased their votes and seats with 4.7% and 5.3% respectively.
The outcome of Monday’s parliamentary elections in Norway confirmed pre-election polls, giving a potentially solid majority to the “red bloc” – the collection of center-left parties in the Storting, the Scandinavian country’s parliament. The Labour Party of incumbent Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre again came out on top with 28.2%, an increase of two percentage points from four years ago. The result was a stark contrast to that of his competitor, conservative Erna Solberg, who served as prime minister from 2013 to 2021. Her party recorded one of the worst results in its history with a meager 14.6%.
This result marks the end of the line for the so-called “Scandinavian Merkel.” On Monday night, addressing her supporters, Solberg took full responsibility for the debacle and apologized to her party, signaling that she will soon step down from her nearly 20-year leadership of the Conservatives. However, the one person in the defeated “blue bloc” who can truly rejoice is Sylvi Listhaug, the former Minister of Immigration and Health in Solberg’s last government. The 48-year-old leader of the far-right Progress Party, already a veteran politician, distinguished herself as a minister with her campaigns to “seal the borders” and fight the so-called “tyranny of goodness” – a Scandinavian version of the term buonismo (do-goodism) used by the Italian right to tar welcoming policies towards refugees and migrants.
With 23.9%, Listhaug achieved her party’s best-ever result, entirely at the expense of the Conservatives. The specter of her potentially leading the center-right “blue bloc,” shown clearly by the polls, was likely the real engine behind the increased voter turnout (79%, up 2% from 2021) and the center-left’s victory.
Benefiting from the high turnout alongside Labour were the parties on the parliament’s left flank: the Greens and Rødt (the Red Party), which increased their votes and seats with 4.7% and 5.3% respectively. The strong showing by the Reds – a party born from the merger of various extra-parliamentary leftist organizations, which first entered parliament four years ago – will be decisive for the policies of the future Labour government. Støre has already stated his intention to enter into discussions with all the red-green parties, including the Socialist Left party (SV) which fell to 5.7%, to get the green light for his new administration. However, the incumbent prime minister specified that he intends once again to form a single-party social democratic government, stressing his platform to guarantee low prices for daycare, reduce wait times in the health service and reform the general tax system.
Norway, like other Nordic and Scandinavian countries, operates under a system of “negative parliamentarism,” in which a government can rule without an explicit vote of confidence and falls only if an absolute majority of parliament votes against it. Thanks to this rule, both the conservatives and social democrats can count on parties in their “bloc” not joining up with the opposition against their own side’s government.
Both Rødt, with its nine deputies, and the Greens, with eight, have set very strict conditions for providing external support to the government. Talks, which already began on Monday night, will determine the extent of common ground with their policy points, ranging from a green transition (and a progressive move away from the country’s oil dependency) to the taxation of large fortunes.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/i-laburisti-si-confermano-in-norvegia-blocco-rosso-in-maggioranza on 2025-09-10