The sad thing is that the election system in Norway heavily favors the bigger parties (as in most countries - but luckily not as bad in Norway as i.e. the US). Allegedly to prevent a "Polish parliament"-situation ("Polsk riksdag"), but probably the real reason is that status-quo is good for the parties with the power to change this.

The difference between 3.9% and 4.1% could mean the difference between one candidate in the parliament and four candidates. Most of the small parties have no real chance to get candidates in - but still, votes are important as a party gets quite big amount of funding for each vote it gets.

Less than 5000 votes in the upcoming election, and any nation-wide party will have to cut a lot of red tape to enter the next election. I'm active in the Pirate Party, and I'm quite concerned that we'll have problems getting more than 5000 votes in the upcoming election, as quite some people and votes are now deflected to the liberals as well as the new "alliance party".