National Coalition Party and True Finns Big Winners in Municipal Elections
Image: YLE
The National Coalition Party tallied the largest number of votes in Sunday's municipal elections. When all votes were counted, the party got 23.4 percent of the total, an increase of 1.6 percent from the previous local elections four years ago. The Social Democratic Party saw its share of the vote decline by 2.9 percentage points to 21.2 percent. However, it nevertheless came ahead of the Centre Party, which was third with 20.1 percent, a drop of 2.7 points from four years ago.
The Green League gained 1.6 points to finish fourth nationwide with 8.9 percent of the vote, just ahead of the Left Alliance, which got 8.8 percent, a decline of 0.8 points.
The populist True Finns party made the greatest proportional gains, taking 5.4 percent of the vote, an increase of 4.5 points from last time.
The Swedish People's Party got 4.7 percent of the vote, a slight decline, and the Christian Democrats gained slightly to get 4.2 percent.
Of the smallest groups, the Finnish Communist Party got 0.5 percent, the Senior Party got 0.1 percent and the Independence Party got 0.1 percent.
The voter turnout was 61.2 percent, a slight improvement on four years ago, when just 58.6 percent went to the polls.
A party's result on a national level has no bearing on the makeup of individual city councils, but gives an indication of the party's average popularity. It's this figure that is usually used to declare a "winner" and "loser" of the election.
YLE