According to forecasts from Norwegian media companies NRK and TV2, the red-green bloc will have a majority in the Storting, with 89 seats against the bourgeois bloc's 80.
The result is roughly as expected, according to Svein Erik Tuastad, a political scientist at the University of Stavanger.
This election can be called a comeback election. First and foremost for Støre, but also for the Green party, he says.
”Catastrophe” for Solberg
The Green party is moving forward and is just above the threshold with 4.7 percent.
The Green party in Norway is seen as a bit strange. In Sweden, they have sat in government with the Social Democrats. It is unthinkable here, says Tuastad.
Since the Center Party left the government at the beginning of 2025, the Labour Party has governed Norway alone. Tuastad believes that it will look the same in the next term. The Center Party may come to challenge the Labour Party, especially when it comes to the EU - the issue that the two parties are most at odds about, and which made the Center Party leave the government, according to Tuastad.
They will try to pressure the Labour Party. They will not succeed, but it creates great uncertainty about the cooperation on the left side.
The question is now who will be the leading party in the bourgeois bloc. The Right, Norway's equivalent to The Moderate Party, is heading for its worst election in twenty years.
It's a catastrophe, not just for the Right but for Erna Solberg personally, says Tuastad.
No Stoltenberg effect
Prior to the election, there has been speculation about whether the former Prime Minister and NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg's return to politics was behind the Labour Party's success.
Tuastad does not believe in a Stoltenberg effect. Instead, he talks about a "hub" of several phenomena - fear of Trump, new energy policy, better economy, and that the Center Party has left the government. The Labour Party becomes a safe alternative for Norwegian voters to gather around.
At the same time, the right-wing populist Progress Party is moving strongly forward and becomes the second-largest party. That success was not unexpected, according to Tuastad.
He sees great similarities between Swedish and Norwegian politics.
In both countries, one is struggling to deal with right-wing populist parties when they grow strong, he says.
