The parties were eurosceptic and their win brought to a halt partially completed negotiations with the European Union regarding Icelandic membership.

The Social Democratic Alliance was able to form a coalition with the Left-Green Movement.

As a result of this, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the first female prime minister of Iceland, as well as the first openly lesbian head of government in the world.

One of the MPs elected for the Citizens' movement, Þráinn Bertelsson, left the parliamentary party almost immediately and then a 16 months after the 2009 election he joined the Left-green movement.

In January 2012, the new party Solidarity was founded by an incumbent MP, Lilja Mósesdóttir, who was elected as a member of the Left-Green Movement.

According to the Law on Parliamentary Elections (nr.24/2000), each constituency is allocated 9 seats decided by proportional voting, with 9 special leveling seats (either 1 or 2 per constituency, depending on population size) adjusting the result so that proportionality is maintained according to the overall number of votes received by a party at the national level.

[16][17] The box below shows the number of seats available in each constituency at the 2013 parliamentary election.

The borderline for alterations is drawn for the first three candidates if the party only win one of the total seats in the constituency, or if more than one seat is won the borderline shall be drawn at the pre-ranked number equal to two times the total number of seats being won by the party in the constituency.

So if a party has won two seats in a constituency, then the voter is only allowed to re-rank the top four ranked candidates on the list, with any rank altering by voters below this line simply being ignored when subsequently calculating the candidate vote shares within each party.

Final calculation of the candidate vote shares is always done according to the Borda method, where all candidates above the previously described borderline in the ranking are granted voting fraction values according to the voters noted rank.

Note that candidate vote scores are not directly comparable to candidates from other parties, as how many seats are being won in a constituency by a particular party will effect how their candidates receive voting fractions (like in the above examples, where a candidate ranked number four for a party winning two seats would receive a voting fraction of 0.25, compared to 0.50 for an equally ranked candidate belonging to a party winning 3 seats)[16][19] After the initial apportionment of constituency seats, all the parties that exceed the election threshold of 5% nationally will also qualify to potentially be granted the extra leveling seats, which seek to adjust the result towards seat proportionality at the national level.

The calculation procedure for the distribution of leveling seats is, first, for each party having exceeded the national threshold of 5%, to calculate the ratio of its total number of votes at the national level divided by the sum of one extra seat added to the number of seats the party have so far won.

The same calculation process is then repeated, until all 9 leveling seats have been allocated to specific parties.

When this strongest constituency has been identified, the leveling seat will be automatically granted to the highest placed unelected runner-up candidate on the party list in this constituency, who among the remaining candidates have the highest personal vote score (the same figure as the one used when ranking candidates for constituency seats).

[16][19] The final deadline for parties to apply for participation in the parliamentary election was 9 April 2013.

The participating parties also needed to submit a valid candidate list to the election committee in each of the constituencies where they intended to run, comprising twice as many candidate names as the number of available seats in the constituency, before 12 April.

[21][22] Despite having a current member presence in the incumbent parliament, the party Solidarity (C list) decided not to run for election.

[48] Last time Iceland had a list of "independent candidates" approved to participate was back in the 2003 elections, where "Independents from the South constituency (Óháðir í Suðurkjördæmi)" was approved as a local list in the South constituency.

[49] On 14 January 2013, the two governing parties of Iceland, the Social Democratic Alliance and Left-Green Movement, announced that because it was no longer possible to complete EU accession negotiations before the parliamentary elections, they had decided to slow down the process and that the 6 remaining unopened chapters would not be opened until after the election.

[52][53] In February 2013, the national congress of both the Independence Party and Progressive Party reconfirmed their policy that further membership negotiations with the EU should be stopped and not resumed unless they are first approved by a national referendum,[54][55] while the national congresses of the Social Democratic Alliance, Bright Future and Left-Green Movement reiterated their support for the completion of EU accession negotiations.

[56] On 19 March 2013, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, an Independence Party MP, put forward a motion in the Althing calling for a referendum asking the Icelandic public whether EU accession negotiations should continue.

[57] In response to Þorgerður and other proponents of EU integration within the Independence Party, Bjarni Benediktsson, the leader of the party, reiterated the party's policy of stopping negotiations with the EU, but promised to hold a referendum on continuing the negotiations in the first half of their term if they form government.

[58][59][60] The list below gives a short summary of significant events in the electoral campaign of each participating party.

[4] Voter turnout was the lowest in any general election since Iceland's independence from Denmark.

[75] Prior to the elections, it was not clear whether this meant that turnout would be increased or just that early voting had become more popular.

Páll Valur Björnsson (A) For the parties having qualified with a national result above the 5% election threshold, the 9 leveling seats (L1-L9) were first distributed party-wise according to the calculation method in this particular order (where the party's total number of national votes was divided by the sum of "won seats plus 1" - with an extra leveling seat granted to the party with the highest fraction - while repeating this process until all 9 leveling seats had been determined).

At the third step, the specific leveling seat is finally granted to the party's highest ranked runner-up candidate within the constituency, according to the same accumulated candidate vote score as being used when apportioning the constituency seats.