Social Democrats lose presidency for first time in 30 years

Paavo Lipponen

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The first round of Sunday’s presidential elections rearranged the Finnish political map in many ways.
      The elections broke the winning streak that the Social Democratic Party has enjoyed in presidential elections ever since the victory of Mauno Koivisto in 1982.
      The SDP’s Paavo Lipponen had to make do with a pathetic 6.7 per cent of the vote.
     
If Sauli Niinistö wins the second round, he will be the first National Coalition Party President of Finland since J.K. Paasikivi, who held the office from 1946 to 1956.
      If Pekka Haavisto is elected president, Finland will get its first Green head of state, and also the first one to publicly live in a gay partnership.
     
Haavisto’s dazzling final surge brought him 7.8%-points more support on election day, compared with absentee ballots cast in advance voting.
      Meanwhile, Niinistö’s support declined by five percentage points, and in Helsinki, Haavisto actually got a larger share of votes cast on election day than Niinistö did.
     
These elections also ended the superiority of the three largest parties, the National Coalition Party, the Social Democrats, and the Centre Party, which have dominated many previous elections.
      Now there were five candidates who were competing on more or less on an equal footing for second place: Lipponen, Haavisto, Timo Soini (Finns Party), Paavo Väyrynen (Centre Party), and Paavo Arhinmäki (Left Alliance).
      Then Haavisto and Väyrynen surged ahead of the others.
     
The even distribution of votes among several candidates of roughly equal strength can be seen when comparing the differences in first-round support between the candidates reaching the second round in recent history (see graph).
      The current two-stage direct popular vote for the Finnish presidency has been implemented in Finland five times so far, since 1994.
     
In 1994 the runoff was between the SDP’s Martti Ahtisaari and the Swedish People’s Party’s Elisabeth Rehn. In the first round they had a gap of just 3.9 percentage points.
      In 2000 the difference between Tarja Halonen (SDP) and Esko Aho (Centre Party) was 5.6 points in the first round.
      There was a fairly large gap in the first round in 2006, when incumbent Halonen got 22.2 percentage points more than Niinistö. Nevertheless, in the second round the difference between the two was just 7.8 points in Halonen’s favour.
     
Now the gap between the number one and number two candidate was 18.2 percentage points, which is less than in the first round of 2006.
      This would portend a close race in the second round.
      At the same time, the 18.8 per cent first-round finish of Haavisto is a record low so far for a candidate coming in second.
     
The disparity in support for a presidential candidate and the candidate’s own party was greatest with Sauli Niinistö, who polled 16.6%-points higher than the National Coalition Party did in last year’s parliamentary elections. Haavisto got 11.5%-points more than the Greens did last April.
      With Paavo Lipponen, the result was quite depressing - he got 12.4 points less in the presidential election than his party did in the parliamentary vote.
     
The big differences between the outcomes of the different types of elections suggest that the presidential race is increasingly becoming a choice among personalities, with party affiliation playing less of a significant role.
      This could explain some of Haavisto’s success. His campaign has largely hinged on his being a candidate more of a delegation of citizens rather than of his designated party.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  SUNDAY EVENING 22:45 Presidential Election - Sauli Niinistö and Pekka Haavisto go through to run-off in February; disappointed Paavo Väyrynen left in third as Finns Party and Social Democrat candidates snubbed by voters (20.1.2012)

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