The presidential election will be decided by the turnout of the Finns

The first round of the presidential election is over and the front-runners Alexander Stubb and Pekka Haavisto have advanced to the second round. It is worth mentioning that neither candidate managed to get more than 30% support, which turns the attention of Stubb and Haavisto to the supporters of the candidates who were left behind in the second round.

Polls show Stubb campaigning in the second round as the front-runner. However, Haavisto is within striking distance, and when assessing the rankings it is important to remember that the old political adage that polls don't count is particularly relevant in presidential elections.

It is clear that many first-round voters whose preferred candidate did not advance to the second round will skip the second round. The election will be decided by which candidate is better able to realise potential support.

The most likely votes will be redistributed from Jussi Halla (ps.) and Olli Rehn (cent.) to Stubb, and from Jutta Urpilainen (sd.) and Li Andersson (left.) to Haavisto. The campaign teams of both candidates have been feverishly trying this week to get public statements of support from prominent politicians from the Finns, the Centre, the SDP and the Left Alliance.

The keys to the solution lie with the supporters of the Finns: Stubb would have to motivate the Finns voters to vote, as it is highly unlikely that the party's supporters would write Haavisto's red-green number on the ballot paper.

Let's return for a moment to those who have dropped out of the second round: despite the defeat, at least the ranks of the Finns and the Centre Party are humming with satisfaction.

Halla-Aho succeeded in his campaign and made history by smashing the results of the previous presidential campaigns of the Finns. Halla-Aho collected practically the same number of votes as the party received in the spring 2023 parliamentary elections (615 000 vs. 620 000). This meant that, for the first time since joining the ranks of the major parties, the party had, in the eyes of its own supporters, a credible candidate who was firmly backed. Another step on the path of a well-established major party.

The Centre Party, on the other hand, is pleased that although Rehn was technically the candidate of the constituency, he achieved a clearly better result than the party achieved in the 2023 parliamentary elections. Several Centre activists have also said that, especially towards the end of the campaign, the streets and squares were filled with people who had come to listen to Rehn. The end-of-camp atmosphere gave the party a spark of hope for the future, as the rise from a resounding defeat in the 2011 parliamentary elections to victory in the 2015 parliamentary elections was kick-started in the centre by the 2012 presidential elections. The election result and successful campaign of Paavo Väyryse restored the centre's belief in its own ability to do its own thing. The party is carefully calculating strategies to repeat the trick.

Juha Halttunen

The author is a partner at Blic.