Early parliamentary elections were held in Iceland on 25 and 26 October 1959.^[1] Following the electoral reforms made after the June elections, the Independence Party won 16 of the 40 seats in the Lower House of the Althing.^[2]

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October 1959 Icelandic parliamentary election

← June 1959 25 and 26 October 1959 1963 →
All 40 seats in the Lower House and 20 seats in the Upper House of Althing
Turnout	90.37%
Party Leader % Seats +/– Upper House Independence Ólafur Thors 39.72 8 +1 Progressive Hermann Jónasson 25.71 6 0 People's Alliance Hannibal Valdimarsson 16.01 3 +1 Social Democratic Emil Jónsson 15.17 3 +1 Lower House Independence Ólafur Thors 39.72 16 +3 Progressive Hermann Jónasson 25.71 11 −2 People's Alliance Hannibal Valdimarsson 16.01 7 +2 Social Democratic Emil Jónsson 15.17 6 +2 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Emil Jónsson Social Democratic Ólafur Thors Independence

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The June 1959 elections had ended with both the Independence Party and the Progressive Party winning 13 seats, despite the IP receiving 42% of the vote to the PP's 27%.^[3] The electoral system at the time was rural–urban proportional representation: a lower tier comprised single member constituencies elected using first-past-the-post voting, two-member constituencies elected using party-list proportional representation (party-list PR) and one large multi-member constituency for Reykjavík that also used party-list PR, topped up by an upper tier of eleven seats chosen from a single national compensatory list.^[4][5]

The reforms saw the replacement of this rural-urban proportional system with a two-tier party-list PR system; the lower tier now comprised eight multi-member constituencies, all elected using party-list PR.^[5][4] Five constituencies elected five members each, two elected six members each and Reykjavík elected 12. The number of seats for Reykjavík was also increased from the prior elections,^[5] increasing the overall total in the Lower House from 35 to 40 and in the Upper House from 17 to 20.^[6]

The voters’ capacity to change the order of names on the PR lists was greatly reduced compared to prior elections as well; the existing Borda count-based system was now only being used to calculate one-third of the final number of votes deemed to have been received by each candidate, while the party’s unaltered ordering determined the remaining two-thirds.^[4]