Persons entitled to vote in the municipal and county council elections 2019

The upcoming Municipal and county council elections will take place on the 9th of September 2019. The final figures for the number of persons entitled to vote in each municipality will not be ready before the election day, Statistics Norway will then publish the number of persons entitled to vote in each municipality and county by important background information including gender, age, education and immigrant background. However, based on an “electoral register” submitted to Statistics Norway by The Norwegian Directorate of elections on the 7th of August 2019, we can publish estimated figures for persons entitled to vote in the municipalities and counties before the election day. Based on experience from previous elections we do not expect these figures to be significantly different form the estimated ones.

Due to the reform of local government the number of municipalities is reduced from 428 in 2015 to 356 in 2019. The number of county council is reduced from 18 to 10.

In the upcoming Municipal and county council elections on the 9th of September 2019, 4.2 million have the right to vote. This is the highest share of voters in any election in Norwegian history. In 133 of the municipalities the number of persons entitled to vote is less than 2 500, compared to 168 in the previous local election. In 2015 the number of municipalities with less than 1 000 persons to vote was 50, in 2019 the number is 37. For the first time since universal suffrage was introduced in Norway there is a slightly higher share of males compared to females. In 6 out of 10 municipalities there is a higher share of males. The average age of electorate increases, the increase is greatest among the age group 67-79. There is also an increase in the number of voters with an immigrant background.