All votes have now been counted and Alexander Stubb gets 27.2 percent, Pekka Haavisto 25.8 percent and upstart Halla-Aho 19.0, according to the preliminary election results.
– The last opinion polls showed that Stubb had gone back, but now he has quite a good lead over Pekka Haavisto, says SVT’s reporter.
Since no candidate came close to reaching more than half of the votes, there will therefore be a second round of elections on February 11 – between Stubb and Haavisto.
Record in early voting
A record number have voted early. A total of 1.88 million people living in Finland have voted early – which corresponds to 44 percent of those entitled to vote.
The presidential office in Finland is more burning than in a very long time as the relatively new NATO country rearranges its foreign and security policy.
It is the president who sits at the negotiating table during the defense alliance summits. The President is also Finland’s Commander-in-Chief. An important selection criterion is therefore foreign policy experience.
Advance tipped further
The candidates who stood out already in the opinion polls were also the ones who received the most votes.
Veteran politicians Alexander Stubb are running for the bourgeois Samlingspartiet. Pekka Haavisto is not running for his party De Gröna, but for a so-called electoral association.
Stubb and Haavisto
Stubb has a solid background in foreign policy. He has also been a member of the European Parliament and between the years 2008 and 2016 he was Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Europe and Foreign Trade, Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
Pekka Haavisto has a background as a minister in several governments, most recently as foreign minister in Sanna Marin’s (SDP) government 2019-2023. He also has extensive experience of international assignments in crisis areas.
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