Election Day

Finland holds parliamentary elections today. 200 members of an unicameral parliament are elected every four years. Finland today is a parliamentary democracy where the cabinet has executive power at the state level in internal affairs, including relations with the European Union. The president is responsible for leading foreign policy meaning the rest of the world.

There are 13 electoral districts that roughly correspond to the 19 regions, the smallest ones of which are combined. For example, I live in the region of Päijänne Tavastia. Together with Tavastia Proper the two make up the Tavastia electoral district the population of which is circa 400,000. The election system is proportionally representative and the seats in each district is allocated using the d'Hondt method. The system favours coalitions. The largest parties have their own coalitions but many of the very smallest parties form coalitions despite being ideologically opposite in order to ensure that at least one candidate in the coalition has a realistic chance of being elected.

The number of representatives to be elected from each election district is proportional to the population of the district. In some countries, only the most popular candidate is elected from each district, which means that voters usually concentrate their votes on two major opposing candidates. In election campaigns, focus is on swing districts where either has a roughly equal chance of being elected.

In our system, picking a candidate is easier for the voter as there are fewer tactical aspects to consider and only ideology counts. But the main drawback is that after the results are in, it is up to the parties to enter into negotiations to form a governing coalition. Sometimes, these negotiations can be very difficult and time-consuming. In some countries, it is customary for political parties to form coalitions prior to the election to make the choice easy for voters because they will know in advance which kind of cabinet they will vote for. This is how it works, to my knowledge, in Sweden, for example.

The three largest parties, two of which have usually been the core of each cabinet are

• National Coalition, pro business party whose traditional main base of support is urban middle class and upper class
• Center Party, former Agrarian League, that represents the middle class of rural areas and small towns
• Social Democratic Party, mostly urban working class

Other popular parties include:

• The Finns Party, a nationalist populist party
• Green League, environmentalists mainly supported by the young urban middle class
• Left Alliance, to the left of social democrats but not communists
• Swedish People's Party, represents the 5% Finland Swedish minority, very liberal culturally and economically

According to a poll by Yle News this year's parliamentary election, the Social Democratic Party will gain 21.3% of the votes (+1.2%), National Coalition will get 16.2% (-1.1), Center Party 14.1% (-1.5), Green League 13.7% (-0.9), the Finns Party 13.3% (+1.3), Left Alliance 8.9% (+0.3), Swedish People's Party 4.7% (+0.7), Christian Democrats 3.5% (-0.1), Blue Reform 1.8% (+.0.4) and the rest 2.5 (-0.2).

If this poll is accurate, the Social Democrats will start the negotiations with the other parties to form a cabinet because they will have the single largest number of MPs. They have announced that they will not accept the Finns Party in their cabinet, which leaves National Coalition, Center Party, Green League and Left Alliance. The Swedes will, again, most likely be willing to accept nearly any platform by nearly any major party in exchange for having their parochial interests furthered by the new cabinet. The Christians are going to have problem with issues like same sex marriage so they will be somewhat less useful to some of the major ones.

My prognosis is that the new Prime Minister will be Antti Rinne, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party. The new cabinet will also include National Coalition, Green League, Swedish People's Party. Going by the numbers in the poll, the combined proportion of the votes would be 21.3%+16.2%+13.7%+4.7% = 55.9%.

I voted about an hour ago. The polling station was at school using temporary buildings for as long as the construction of a new building lasts. You guessed it. The old building had serious indoor air quality problems thanks to extensive moisture damage.

A Temporary school building

A list of candidates

A part of the new school building under construction