SUNDAY EVENING: Centre Party and SDP make gains in increased vote for European Parliament elections
Former Centre Party Prime Minister Anneli Jäätteenmäki overwhelming vote-catcher as seven new MEPs are elected
The results are in from the European Parliament elections, the clock has ticked past 11 p.m., and we are permitted to pass on the information that the voter turnout reached 41.1.%, up noticeably from the 31.4% in 1999, and that the Centre Party and the Social Democrats were the principal winners at the polls.
The gains by the Centre Party and SDP reflect a Finnish curiosity: on a night when many ruling parties around Europe were given a bloody nose, only the junior partner in the current government coalition (the Swedish People's Party) saw its share of the vote decline.
With 90.4% of the votes counted, the Centre Party could claim 24.5% of the votes, up from 21.3% in 1999. The Centrists held on to their existing four seats, and the overwhelming vote-catcher of this election was the former Prime Minister and Centre Party chairwoman Anneli Jäätteenmäki, who had collected 140,000 votes by this stage.
The Social Democrats moved up from 17.9% in 1999 to reach 21.3%, but it was not enough to gain a fourth seat. The leading SDP candidate was Reino Paasilinna, who had secured 58,000 votes by around 22.30.
The moderate conservatives of the opposition National Coalition Party lost a certain amount of ground, slipping to 23.1% from 25.3%, but managed to hang on to their four seats. The big NCP winner on the day was Alexander Stubb, who grabbed the second-largest haul of votes in the entire country, with nearly 100,000 supporters at this late stage of the count. Since urbanites (who make up the bulk of the uncounted votes) are more likely to back the National Coalition Party than the traditionally "rural" centrists, it is possible the NCP's share of the poll may rise, while the Centre Party may slip back somewhat.
Another success-story was Esko Seppänen of the Left Alliance, who secured re-election comfortably as the party collected around 9.1% of the votes, a figure more or less unchanged from 1999.
The Greens saw their support dwindle from 13.4% to around 10% and lost one of their two seats. Satu Hassi was elected, but Matti Vuori failed to secure his return to Strasbourg after one term.
The Christian Democrats (who were in an election alliance with the populist True Finns) did not manage to gather enough votes to send a representative to the European Parliament. The Christian Democrats will be dismayed to see that Eija-Riitta Korhola made it on a National Coalition Party ticket: she defected from the Christian Democrats in mid-term.
The Swedish People’s Party, on the other hand, did manage to return Henrik Lax, who replaces Astrid Thors, a MEP who now becomes a Finnish MP. By this late stage, the SPP secured 5.8% of the votes, down from 6.8% last time.
Finland's 14 MEPs (Finland had 16 in the old Parliament):
Anneli Jäätteenmäki (Centre Party) NEW
Kyösti Virrankoski (Centre Party)
Paavo Väyrynen (Centre Party)
Hannu Takkula (Centre Party) NEW
Alexander Stubb (National Coalition Party) NEW
Ville Itälä (National Coalition Party) NEW
Piia-Noora Kauppi (National Coalition Party)
Eija-Riitta Korhola (National Coalition Party)
Reino Paasilinna (Social Democrats)
Riitta Myller (Social Democrats)
Lasse Lehtinen (Social Democrats) NEW
Esko Seppänen (Left Alliance)
Satu Hassi (Greens) NEW
Henrik Lax (Swedish People’s Party) NEW
As expected, Finland's Ari Vatanen, a former rally world champion, was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the French centre-right grouping Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP). Vatanen was standing in south-eastern France, where he also lives.
We shall provide further details and the final results (please note that the percentages given above are from a late stage in the counting, but that the names of the selected candidates are final) in tomorrow's normal edition.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 11.6.2004 - TODAY |
 SUNDAY EVENING: Centre Party and SDP make gains in increased vote for European Parliament elections |
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