Municipal council and county council elections

An important motivation behind the Local Election Survey 2023 is to analyze differences between those who voted and those who did not vote.

In this report, we provide an overview of the participation and representation of immigrants and Norwegian-born with immigrant parents in the municipal election in 2023.

The municipal council and county council elections 2023 were held on 11 September 2023. There were elections for 357 different municipal and city councils, as well as 14 county councils. This report is only about the local council elections, for the entire country as a whole.

All foreign nationals with three years of legal residence in Norway were given the right to vote in local elections in 1983. Over the last elections there has been a steady increase in the number of persons with immigrant background who are entitled to vote.

Previous literature has found that extending the suffrage to both females and poorer voters increases the supply of public goods.

In 2017, the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget) decided to reduce the number of municipalities in Norway from 426 to 358. The municipal and regional reform was completed on 1.1 2020.