Politics of Finland - Political Parties and Elections

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.

e • d Summary of the 15 and 29 January 2006 Finnish presidential election results
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
e • d Result of the 17 April 2011 Finnish parliamentary election
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

Famous quotes containing the words political, parties and/or elections:

    “Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”
    —Gore Vidal (b. 1925)