Finnish parliamentary election, 2003

16 March 2003

All 200 seats to the Parliament 101 seats were needed for a majority

Turnout	66.7%
	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Anneli Jäätteenmäki	Paavo Lipponen	Ville Itälä
Party	Centre	Social Democratic	National Coalition
Leader since	2000	1993	2001
Last election	48 seats, 22.4%	51 seats, 22.9%	46 seats, 21.0%
Seats won	55	53	40
Seat change	7	2	6
Popular vote	689,391	683,223	517,904
Percentage	24.7%	24.5%	18.6%
Swing	2.3%	1.6%	2.4%

	Fourth party	Fifth party	Sixth party

Leader	Suvi-Anne Siimes	Osmo Soininvaara	Bjarne Kallis
Party	Left Alliance	Green League	Christian Democrat
Leader since	1998	2001	2001
Last election	20 seats, 10.9%	11 seats, 7.3%	7 seats, 5,34%
Seats won	19	14	7
Seat change	1	3	3
Popular vote	277,152	223,564	148,987
Percentage	9.9%	8.0%	5.3%
Swing	1.0%	0.7%	1.1%

	Seventh party	Eighth party	Ninth party

Leader	Jan-Erik Enestam	Timo Soini	Yrjö Hakanen
Party	Swedish People's	Finns	Communist Party
Leader since	1998	1997	1990
Last election	11 seats, 5.1%	1 seat, 1.0%	0 seats, 0.8%
Seats won	8	3	0
Seat change	3	2	0
Popular vote	128,824	43,816	21,079
Percentage	4.6%	1.6%	0.8%
Swing	0.5%	0.6%

Prime Minister before election

Paavo Lipponen
Social Democratic

Prime Minister

Anneli Jäätteenmäki
Centre

Finland

This article is part of a series on the politics and government of Finland
State Constitution Declaration of Independence Human rights
Executive President (list) Sauli Niinistö Prime Minister (list) Juha Sipilä Cabinet Executive departments
Legislative 37th Parliament Speaker: Maria Lohela
Judiciary General Courts Supreme Court Courts of Appeal District Courts Administrative Courts Supreme Administrative Court Regional Administrative Courts Prosecutor General Matti Kuusimäki Chancellor of Justice Jaakko Jonkka
Recent elections Parliamentary: 2007 2011 2015 Presidential: 2000 2006 2012 European: 2004 2009 2014
Political parties National Coalition Party (KOK) Social Democratic Party (SDP) Finns Party (formerly True Finns, PS) Centre Party (KESK) Left Alliance (VAS) Green League (VIHR) Swedish People's Party (RKP) Christian Democrats (KD) Politicians
Administrative divisions Regions (Maakunnat, Landskap) Sub-regions (Seutukunnat, Ekonomiska regioner) Municipalities (Kunnat, Kommuner)
Foreign relations Ambassadors
Other countries Atlas

Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 16 March 2003.^[1] The Centre Party led by Anneli Jäätteenmäki overtook the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to become the largest party in the Eduskunta. This was credited mainly to Jäätteenmäki's powerful leadership and modernization of the party still often viewed as agrarian and conservative by many. However, the SDP actually won some seats and increased its share of the vote, losing in the amount of total popular votes only by few thousand.

The Green League achieved its best results ever, but the Swedish People's Party suffered losses. The Christian Democrats gained votes but lost seats. This was partly because in 1999 and before Christian Democrats had been in an election coalition with Centre Party and benefited from this, while the Centre Party had lost seats due to the arrangement, and thus discontinued it starting from 2003. The Left Alliance continued its slow decline, while the small populist Finns Party did not do as well as some had expected.

Electoral system

The election was held under the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation, where the electoral district voted directly for the individual candidate, but each vote also benefitted the candidate's party.

The country was divided into fifteen electoral districts, with the boundaries corresponding to those of administrative regions (in some cases several regions have been grouped into a single constituency), with the exception that the city of Helsinki serves as its own constituency, instead of being part of the Uusimaa region in this case. Each constituency elected a number of representatives to the Eduskunta based on its population. The autonomous region of Åland had a special status with one representative even if its population was not large enough.

Candidates for the parliamentary election were allowed to be set by political parties and electoral associations. Any Finnish citizen over the age of 18 was eligible for candidacy, apart from incapacitated persons and professional soldiers. Each party or electoral union was allowed to set a maximum of 14 candidates per electoral district, or, in the case the district elected more than 14 members of parliament, an amount equal to that of the representatives elected.

Each Finnish citizen aged 18 or over on the election day had the right to vote in the election, no matter where they lived. The electorate consisted of a total of 4,220,951 people, 4,015,552 of whom were resident in Finland and 205,399 abroad.

Results

Party	Votes	%	Seats	+/–
Centre Party	689,391	24.7	55	+7
Social Democratic Party	683,223	24.5	53	+2
National Coalition Party	517,904	18.6	40	–6
Left Alliance	277,152	9.9	19	–1
Green League	223,564	8.0	14	+3
Christian Democrats	148,987	5.3	7	–3
Swedish People's Party	128,824	4.6	8	–3
Finns Party	43,816	1.6	3	+2
Communist Party of Finland	21,079	0.8	0	0
Forces for Change in Finland	11,485	0.4	0	New
Liberals	8,776	0.3	0	0
Kirjava ”Puolue” – Elonkehän Puolesta	6,659	0.2	0	0
Pensioners for People	5,346	0.2	0	0
Finnish People's Blue-Whites	4,579	0.2	0	New
Åland Coalition	4,306	0.2	1	0
Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism	2,908	0.1	0	0
Finland Rises – People Unites	2,640	0.1	0	New
For the Poor	1,448	0.1	0	New
Joint Responsibility Party	404	0.0	0	New
Others	9,266	0.3	0	–
Invalid/blank votes	23,943	–	–	–
Total	2,815,700	100	200	0
Registered voters/turnout	4,220,951	66.7	–	–
Source: Tilastokeskus^[2]

Popular vote

KESK			24.69%
SDP			24.47%
KOK			18.55%
VAS			9.93%
VIHR			8.01%
SKL			5.34%
RKP			4.61%
PS			1.57%
Others			2.83%

Parliament seats

KESK			27.50%
SDP			26.50%
KOK			20.00%
VAS			9.50%
VIHR			7.00%
RKP			4.00%
SKL			3.50%
PS			1.50%
Others			0.50%

Aftermath

The Council of State, or the Finnish cabinet, was formed after the parliamentary election by the Centre Party, with its leader Anneli Jäätteenmäki as Prime Minister. A coalition government was formed, composing of the two largest parties of the Eduskunta, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Centre Party, and a minor coalition partner, the Swedish People's Party, who has a history of being a partner in government since 1976. The new cabinet had eight ministers from both the SDP and the Centre Party, and two ministers from the Swedish People's Party.

However, this proved to be one of the shortest-lived cabinets in Finnish history, lasting only 69 days, after the Iraq leak scandal led to the government falling on 24 June 2003. A new cabinet was formed by the Centre Party's Matti Vanhanen, with largely the same composition as the previous cabinet.

References

↑ Nohlen, D & Stöver, P (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p606 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
↑ Eduskuntavaalit 1927–2003 Tilastokeskus 2004

External links

Parliamentary Elections at the Finnish Ministry of Justice's website. (Web Archive)

Elections and referendums in Finland

Parliamentary elections	1863 1867 1872 1877 1882 1885 1888 1891 1894 1900 1901 1905 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1913 1916 1917 1919 1922 1924 1927 1929 1930 1933 1936 1939 1945 1948 1951 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1972 1975 1979 1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007 2011 2015 2019

Municipal elections	1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1928 1930 1933 1936 1945 1947 1950 1953 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2017

Presidential elections	1919 1925 1931 1937 1940 1943 1944 1946 1950 1956 1962 1968 1973 1978 1982 1988 1994 2000 2006 2012 2018

European elections	1996 1999 2004 2009 2014 2019

Referendums	1931 1994

Elections in brackets were not public elections

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 4/7/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.