Nearly eighty percent of Icelanders support EU referendum

A large majority of Icelanders supports a national referendum on whether or not formal negotiations with the European Union should continue. However, an equally large majority says they don‘t want Iceland to become an EU member state.

These are the results of Fréttablaðið‘s latest poll on the subject. 79 per cent of those who answered the poll said they are in favor of holding a referendum but just over twenty per cent said they were opposed.

The numbers are more or less reversed in regards to possible EU membership. Less than thirty per cent say they want Iceland to become a member of the union but over seventy percent say that they don‘t.

It would seem, therefore, that Icelanders‘ stance on a possible referendum has little to do with their opinion of the EU. This disparity is clearest among voters of the governing Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn). According to the poll, over half of Independence Party voters say they would support a referendum even though a whopping ninety per cent say they don‘t want Iceland to become an EU member state.

The response rate of Fréttablaðið‘s poll was just over 74 per cent.