Iceland President Wins Third Term Overwhelmingly
Incumbent Vigdis Finnbogadottir gained an overwhelming victory over another female candidate in Saturday’s presidential election in her bid for a third four-year term.
Poll officials said early today that with 47.3% of the ballots counted, Finnbogadottir won about 95% of the vote and her rival, Sigrun Thorsteinsdottir, had the remaining 5%.
The officials said about 75% of Iceland’s 173,800 eligible voters cast ballots.
Concession Speech
In conceding defeat in a television interview, Thorsteinsdottir said the election had been a great victory for all “democratic and freedom-loving people in Iceland” as opposed to the “autocratic and monarchist” supporters of the Establishment.
President Finnbogadottir said in a TV interview she was delighted by the results and that any incumbent president would be satisfied with such overwhelming support.
Final results were expected later today.
Vigdis, as the president is popularly known, was the world’s first democratically elected female state president when she defeated three men in 1980.
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