Political Parties and Elections
For other political parties see Political parties in Finland. An overview on elections and election results is included in Elections in Finland.Finland's proportional representation system encourages a multitude of political parties and has resulted in many coalition-cabinets. Formerly the life expectancy of the coalition governments has been short, but since about 1980 the trend has been that the same coalition rules for the whole period between elections.
Finland elects on national level a head of state—the president—and a legislature. The president is elected for a six year term by the people. The Parliament (Finnish: eduskunta, Swedish: riksdag) has 200 members, elected for a four year term by proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies. Finland has a multi-party system, with three strong parties, in which no one party often has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments.
In addition to the presidential and parliamentary elections, there are European Parliament elections every five years, and local municipal elections (held simultaneously in every municipality) every four years.
| Candidate | Nominating party | First round | Second round | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | ||
| Tarja Halonen | Social Democratic Party | 1,397,030 | 46.3 | 1,630,833 | 51.8 |
| Sauli Niinistö | National Coalition Party | 725,866 | 24.1 | 1,517,947 | 48.2 |
| Matti Vanhanen | Centre Party | 561,990 | 18.6 | ||
| Heidi Hautala | Green League | 105,248 | 3.5 | ||
| Timo Soini | True Finns | 103,492 | 3.4 | ||
| Bjarne Kallis | Christian Democrats | 61,483 | 2.0 | ||
| Henrik Lax | Swedish People's Party | 48,703 | 1.6 | ||
| Arto Lahti | Independent | 12,989 | 0.4 | ||
| Invalid/blank votes | 8,805 | – | 14,354 | – | |
| Total | 3,025,606 | 100 | 3,163,667 | 100 | |
| Source: First round Ministry of Justice, total | |||||
| Parties | Votes | MPs | MPs %/votes % | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | ±swing | % | ±pp swing | # | ± | % | swing | |||
| National Coalition Party | 599,138 | 17,703 | 20.4 | 1.9 | 44 | 6 | 22.0 | 1.08 | 0.04 | |
| Social Democratic Party of Finland | 561,558 | 32,636 | 19.1 | 2.3 | 42 | 3 | 21.0 | 1.10 | 0.05 | |
| True Finns | 560,075 | 447,819 | 19.1 | 15.0 | 39 | 34 | 19.5 | 1.02 | 0.40 | |
| Centre Party | 463,266 | 177,162 | 15.8 | 7.3 | 35 | 16 | 17.5 | 1.11 | 0.01 | |
| Left Alliance | 239,039 | 5,257 | 8.1 | 0.7 | 14 | 3 | 7.0 | 0.86 | 0.10 | |
| Green League | 213,172 | 21,257 | 7.3 | 1.2 | 10 | 5 | 5.0 | 0.68 | 0.21 | |
| Swedish People's Party | 125,785 | 735 | 4.3 | 0.3 | 9 | 0 | 4.5 | 1.05 | 0.07 | |
| Christian Democrats | 118,453 | 16,337 | 4.0 | 0.9 | 6 | 1 | 3.0 | 0.75 | 0.03 | |
| Åland representative | 8,546 | 1,015 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 1 | 0 | 0.5 | 1.67 | 0.57 | |
| The Cabinet | 1,401,361 | 216,857 | 48.2 | 10.8 | 99 | 27 | 49.5 | 1.03 | 0.04 | |
| The Opposition | 1,479,125 | 393,589 | 51.8 | 10.8 | 101 | 27 | 50.5 | 0.97 | 0.04 | |
| Totals | 2,889,032 | 185,278 | 98.5 | 0.6 | 200 | 100.0 | 1.02 | |||
| Other unrepresented parties | ||||||||||
| Pirate Party | 15,103 | 15,103 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Communist Party of Finland | 9,232 | 9,045 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Change 2011 | 7,504 | 7,504 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Freedom Party | 4,285 | 4,285 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Independence Party | 3,236 | 2,305 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Senior Citizens' Party | 3,195 | 13,520 | 0.1 | 0.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Workers Party | 1,857 | 93 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Communist Workers' Party | 1,575 | 432 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| For the Poor | 1,335 | 1,186 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Other parties | 11,763 | 825 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Turnout | 2,931,817 | 159,018 | 70.5 | 2.6 | ||||||
| Eligible voters | 4,159,857 | 76,308 | ||||||||
Read more about this topic: Politics Of Finland
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