Finland - 021 Apr 2023 Parliamentary Election
On 02 April 2023, voters would elect all 200 members of parliament, from 13 electoral districts, for a 4-year term, through an open list proportional representation system. Voters cast a ballot for a single candidate and seats are allocated through the d’Hont method with no legal threshold for the allocation of seats in parliament.
Legislative power in the Republic of Finland is vested in a 200-member unicameral parliament (Eduskunta), with a prime minister serving as the head of the government and a directly elected president acting as head of state. The parliament enacts laws, decides on the state budget, supervises the activities of authorities subordinated to the government, and adopts international agreements. The parliament also elects the prime minister who is officially appointed by the president. The prime minister nominates other members of the government who are appointed by the president while the president appoints judges and exercises powers in foreign affairs and national defense.
Parliamentary elections are primarily regulated by the Constitution and the Election Act. Separate amendments were made to the Elections Act in 2022 to regulate elections for newly instituted county representatives, to permit Constituency Election Committees (CECs) to begin counting advance votes two hours earlier than before on election day, and to organise voting in military garrisons. All ODIHR NAM interlocutors expressed confidence in the electoral legal framework and its implementation.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) oversees the organization of elections and is responsible for issuing regulations and guidance to subordinate levels of the election administration, maintaining the register of political parties and the Election Data System (EDS), determining the elections budget and overseeing the printing of election material. In all, voting on election day will take place at close to 2000 polling stations with 900 polling stations operating for advance voting and approximately 200 polling stations in Finnish embassies and consulates abroad. The MoJ produces materials with voter information in Braille, sign language and easy-to-understand language to facilitate voting for persons with disabilities.
Citizens over 18 years of age are entitled to vote. Voter registration is passive and voter information is extracted from the Population Information System (POIS) maintained by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency (DPDSA). The voter list is publicly available 41 days ahead of elections.
Candidates are nominated by political parties which are registered with the MoJ, and by constituency associations which have collected the signatures of at least 100 voters as required for parliamentary elections. Although there are no legal quotas, many parties apply internal policies to promote women, youth and minority candidates. Of the membership in the outgoing parliament, 45 per cent are women, as are the prime minister, all the leaders of the coalition parties and 12 of the 19 outgoing members of the cabinet.
Political parties are eligible for public funding in proportion to the number of parliamentary seats they hold following the most recent elections. In addition to the funding provided by the parties, election campaign activities can be funded from a candidates’ own resources, as well as loans and contributions received from individuals and legal entities. Parties are permitted to receive funding from foreign individuals and associations which share the same political ideology.
The media landscape is pluralistic and provides access to a diverse range of views through a variety of outlets. The public broadcaster, YLE (Yleisradio) plans to organize a number of electoral programmes to give all contestants equitable conditions to present their platforms, as well as television debates with the participation of parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties. The selfregulatory organ for the media, the Council for Mass Media considers complaints on breaches of professional ethics and promotes good journalistic practice and freedom of speech.
Parliamentary elections were last held on 14 April 2019 and resulted in eight parties winning seats in parliament with no individual party having garnered more than 20 per cent of the available seats. The Social Democratic Party, Left Alliance, Center Party, Green League, and the Swedish People’s Party of Finland formed the government. In the last elections in 2019, the SDP received 40, the Finns Party 39 and the NCP 38 seats. The NCP lost one seat when MP Wille Rydman resigned summer 2022 amid allegations of harassing young women. He is running for re-election on the Finns Party ticket.
The day before the elections, public opinion polls suggested that support for the three largest parties was so closely tied that any of them could end up on top, with the first chance to try to form a new government. Former deputy prime minister Petteri Orpo's opposition National Coalition Party (NCP) still led the polls, as it had for more than a year, but Riikka Purra's nationalist Finns Party had almost caught up with while Prime Minister Sanna Marin's SDP was close behind.
Tthis campaign has been marked by the ferocity of the debate and the harsh choice of words, where interestingly, above all, the SDP and Prime Minister Marin have stood out in the most vigorously. Another distinctive feature of this campaign: for once only three parties have a realistic chance of leading the next government.
The Centre is now campaigning for the first time as a medium-sized party outside the prime ministerial race. The Centre has long been one of Finland's biggest parties, leading half a dozen governments over the past 30 years. If the Centre permanently shrinks to a party of 20-30 MPs, that would constitute a really major change in the Finnish party structure, the kind that only happens about once in half a century.
While the importance of social media has grown with each election, this campaign cycle has been marked by – the strong emergence of the Finns Party in this field. Despite its reputation as something of a hick party, the Finns Party has been the strongest in terms of social media presence and has also been the first to take over TikTok.
Marin has appealed directly to voters, saying that voting for the SDP is the only way to prevent the Finns Party from entering the government and the creation of a right-wing government. The Greens and the Left Alliance probably have their teeth clenched over this. It's completely acceptable and rational to primarily vote based on the future government line-up, but it's equally acceptable and reasonable to vote for a certain party to show support for that particular value set.
The main themes of the elections have been familiar, for example, balancing public finances. Here, perhaps, the 2023 campaign cycle has been at its most traditional, with arguments about whether we should carry out spending adjustments or tax increases. Among other familiar themes, he highlights tackling the effects of Finland's aging population and shrinking labour force, as well as how to maintain welfare services in the future.
Finland is suffering from a shortage of workers. This long-standing problem has flown under the radar, hidden by more prominent headlines, most notably the Nordic country's pivot towards NATO. But it could prove a key issue as Finns head to the polls for a general election on April 2 to decide who should steer the country next. Since pandemic restrictions eased, the labor shortage has become even worse. In Uusimaa — the most populous region of Finland that includes the capital Helsinki — the share of unfilled vacancies has increased from 25% in 2019 to almost 60% in 2022.
There is a widely held consensus among Finland's major political parties that the country must open its doors to more foreign workers. But Finland's right-wing parties see things differently. They say that if social security and unemployment benefits are too good, people won't have enough economic incentives to go to work.
Finland's center-right leader claimed victory in the tight general election that saw the far-right post a record score to come in second, as Prime Minister Sanna Marin's Social Democrats finished third. "This was a great victory," the 53-year-old head of the conservative National Coalition Party, Petteri Orpo, told his cheering supporters. "On the basis of this election result ... we will start negotiating a government in Finland," he said.
Orpo could choose to build a government either with the far-right Finns Party or the Social Democrats, though he is at odds with both on various issues. Orpo's National Coalition is at odds with Marin's SDP on budget austerity, and clashes with the Finns Party on immigration, the EU and climate policy. With 99 percent of votes counted, the centre-right was credited with 48 of the 200 seats in parliament, the far-right with 46 and the Social Democrats with 43.
In terms of votes, the result was even closer with the centre-right winning 20.6 percent, the far-right 20.1 percent and the Social Democrats 19.9 percent. The biggest party in parliament traditionally gets the first chance to build a government, and since the 1990s that party has always claimed the prime minister's office. Orpo, whose comfortable lead in the polls shrank in the final stages of the campaign, has made the economy his top priority. Finland's debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from 64 percent in 2019 to 73 percent, which his National Coalition wants to address by cutting spending by six billion euros ($6.5 billion).
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