A majority is saying no to Iceland opening new negotiations with the EU. This also dims hopes that Norway might follow suit.

With 178,623 votes counted in Iceland’s referendum, the No side, which does not want negotiations on EU membership, is leading with 51.8 per cent, according to results from the count published by Morgunblaðið.

There are 272,690 registered voters in Iceland, which means that well over half of the votes have been counted.

The pattern in the voting results is, unsurprisingly, that people are most positive towards EU negotiations in the capital, Reykjavik, while scepticism is greatest in the rest of the country.

It may be too early for the No side to pop the champagne, but a victory for the No side now appears clearly the most likely outcome, even though the race is close.

“It looks as though it will be a No; there would have to be a very unexpected turn for it to be a Yes,” political scientist Vilborg Ása Guðjónsdóttir says in an interview with mbl.is, after having expected the margins to be extremely narrow.

Many Icelanders are concerned about losing control of an important natural resource, namely fish, to the EU, and half the population thus does not even want to sit down at the negotiating table with the Union – the outcome of any negotiations would be subject to a new referendum.

That will inevitably be noticed in Norway as well.

Nor do security-policy scare stories about Trump appear to have had any effect on voters.