Municipal and county council election, candidates and representatives

The party of the chairman/deputy chairman, county council chairman/deputy county council chairman: Elected persons are listed under the party/electoral list they stood for election for. If elected from a joint list, local list or other lists, they will be included in these lists, irrespective of party. The same applies to municipal council representatives and executive committee/county cabinet representatives. Re-elected representatives in the executive committee/county cabinet: Executive committee/county cabinet representatives are defined as re-elected if they were members of the sitting executive committee/county cabinet on the election day. Since 2003, information on re-elected representatives and number of periods for all municipal council representatives and county council representatives has been collected. This information is also combined with information on country background, education, occupational status and industry.

Classification of municipalities Classification of counties Classification of regions

Name: Municipal and county council election, candidates and representatives
Topic: Elections

Division for Population Statistics

For municipal council election: Municipal level and regional level. For county council election: County level.

Ever four years (election year).

Not relevant

The statistics files are stored in Statistics Norway. Microdata can be supplied  for research purposes.

The purpose is to make official statistics on all parties candidates for municipal and county council prior to the election. After the constitution of the municipal councils and the county councils, official statistics is produced from the municipal council and county council election and the executive committee of local council and chairmen election. Since 2003, Statistics Norway has collected the national identity number of all representatives so that they can be combined with various variables such as income, country background, education and occupational status.

Ministries,  Municipalities and county municipalities, journalists and students ,political parties, election researchers

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 08 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given inthe Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.

Aggregated elections results are  published on election night  on valg.no. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/portal/valg/id456491/. Municipalities publishes information for their own municipality on their homepage. The official statistics for Municipal and county elections published by SSB are included in a statistical system along with statistics for parliamentary elections, Sami Parliamentary elections and local referendums. This is a part of Stat Norway's system of Social Statistics inncluding population statistics and social welfare statistics with common terms and definitions.

§ 2-2 of the Statistics Act and § 15-7 of the Election Act

Not relevant

The population consists of elected representatives in municipal councils and county councils.

SSB receive administrative data on the candidates from The Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation before the election. SSB performs a separate collection of representatives via internet based form from all municipalities and counties after the election. The data source consists of electronic questionnaires on the Internet. These are completed by the counties and municipalities, and submitted to Statistics Norway.

Full count of all candidates and elected representatives.

The municipalities and county municipalities receive one form each.

Manual and computerised controls are carried out, mainly to check that the total figures are correct and logical checks. The results are compared with the results of the previous election. Micro editing is performed if differences are discovered.  

Not relevant

Suppression if direct identification is possible with regard to sensitive information.

Information on chairmen's parties is available back to 1934. Information on executive committees is available from the 1979 election, but only at county level for the earliest elections. Information on chairmen and deputy chairmen of the county councils is available back to 1979. Since 2003, information on all municipal council and county council representatives has been collected.

It is essential for the quality of the statistics that the information from the counties and municipalities is correct. If the elected representatives are listed as belonging to parties that stood for election, it is difficult to check if the distribution between the parties is correct. Furthermore, the representatives' parties are coded before registration and there is always a risk of errors despite comprehensive controls.

Not relevant