Thora Arnorsdottir, a 37-year-old respected journalist with no political background who just had a baby, acknowledged defeat in Iceland's presidential election on Saturday.

Incumbent Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, a 69-year-old socialist who has held the largely ceremonial post since 1996, won a record fifth straight term in office, The AFP reports.

With 48 percent of votes counted, Grimsson was seen garnering 52 percent, while Arnorsdottir, who interrupted her campaign for a week in May to give birth to her third child, was credited with 33 percent.

Grimsson, like a majority of Icelanders, is opposed to EU membership for fear the North Atlantic nation will lose its sovereignty.

The left-wing government applied however to join the bloc in 2009 after the financial and economic crash that saw Iceland's three biggest banks collapse and required a $2.1 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

Grimsson was subsequently heavily criticised for befriending bankers during the boom years and hailing their entrepreneurial spirit, and was ridiculed for supporting what turned out to be a bubble that burst.

But he vindicated himself in the eyes of the public with his refusal, twice, to sign a bill to use taxpayers' money to compensate Britain and the Netherlands for the 2008 collapse of online bank Icesave.

While allowed to do so by the constitution, no president had exercised that right until Grimsson did so in 2004 over a controversial media law.

A former university professor, Grimsson will now begin a record fifth four-year term in office, though he has won only three presidential elections: in both 2000 and 2008 he was the only candidate and was granted a new term without a vote.
Iceland has had five presidents since its independence from Denmark in 1944, three of whom have served four terms.