HS poll: Finns moderately satisfied with content of election campaign

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A narrow majority of Finns feel that the candidates in Sunday’s Presidential election have succeeded in raising issues that are important to the people.
      According to a poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat and conducted by Suomen Gallup in the first week of January, 54 percent felt that the candidates had succeeded well, or fairly well in this.
      In their responses, 44 percent gave the answer "fairly well", while 25 percent said "neither well, nor poorly". Only 11 percent felt that the candidates had been fairly unsuccessful, or unsuccessful in forward important matters.
      Supporters of the National Coalition Party’s Sauli Niinistö and the Centre Party’s Matti Vanhanen gave somewhat more positive assessments than those of President Tarja Halonen.
      Niinistö’s supporters gave more negative feedback on the campaigns than those of Vanhanen and Halonen.
      Women were slightly more satisfied with the way that issues were raised in the campaign than men were. Of the various respondent groups, those under the age of 25 were the most satisfied, with 64 percent giving a positive assessment of the raising of issues during the campaign - even though this age group is generally the least likely to vote in the elections.
     
When assessing the efforts of the individual candidates, Niinistö’s campaign would seem to divide opinions the most.
      The respondents were asked if the campaigns of the individual candidates had surprised them positively or negatively; Niinistö got the highest number of responses for both alternatives.
      All candidates, except for the independent Arto Lahti, got more positive than negative responses to this question.
      Differences could be seen between men and women, with women giving more positive feedback for Halonen’s campaign, while men gave slightly higher marks for Niinistö’s campaign than women did. Young voters also gave a fairly positive view of Niinistö’s campaign. Pensioners tended to approve of Vanhanen’s campaign.
      Ten percent of respondents did not answer the question concerning positive surprise, while 14 percent did not give an opinion on being negatively surprised.
     
The survey involved telephone interviews with 1,500 people in mainland Finland on January 5th - 7th. The margin of error was put at 2.5 percentage points.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Advance voting activity now lower than in elections six years ago (11.1.2006)
  Presidential candidates clash over participation in NATO exercises (11.1.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat