Updated 12 April 1999

Votes cast per party and voting turnout

In comparison to the previous Parliamentary elections, the National Coalition Party turned out to be the greatest winner of these Parliamentary elections. It increased its proportion of votes cast by 3.1 percentage points and got 21 per cent of all votes cast in the whole country, thus gaining 7 more seats in the Parliament. In all, it now has 46 MPs and got a total of 563,835 votes cast in the whole country, which is about 66,000 more than in 1995. The Coalition Party did especially well in the constituency of Helsinki, where the number of votes cast for the party rose by 4.9 percentage points.

The other winner of these elections was the Center Party. It got 22.4 per cent of the votes cast, with an increase of 2.5 percentage points, and got four more seats. The number of votes cast for the Center Party was 600,592, about 48,600 more than in the previous elections.

The Social Democratic Party is still the largest party in Finland, although it lost a substantial number of votes cast compared to the previous elections. The defeat of the Social Democratic Party was almost equal to its victory in 1995 in the number of votes cast, at almost 173,000. The total number of votes cast for the Social Democratic Party was 612,963 (22.9%) and it still has the highest number of seats, 51, in the Parliament. Compared to 1995, it got 12 fewer seats and its proportion of votes cast was 5.4 percentage points lower than in the previous elections.

The voting turnout of Finnish citizens resident in Finland was 68.3 per cent. It was 3.6 percentage points lower than in the previous Parliamentary elections. Participation in elections has become constantly weaker in the past few decades. For example, the voting turnout was about 17 percentage points higher in 1962 than in these elections.The voting turnout was always high until the Parliamentary elections 1983. In the Parliamentary elections since then, it has become ever weaker. The voting turnout was highest now in the constituency of Vaasa, 73.3 per cent, and in the constituency of Helsinki, 70.3 per cent, but it remained under 70 per cent in the other constituencies. In all, 4,152,430 persons, including Finnish citizens resident abroad, were entitled to vote. Of all these, 3,948,265 were resident in Finland. In all Statistics Finland's statistical tables, if not indicated otherwise, voting turnout is calculated from the votes cast by Finnish citizens resident in Finland.

Voting turnout 1945 - 1999
1945	74.9%
1948	78.2%
1951	74.6%
1954	79.9%
1958	75.0%
1962	85.1%
1966	84.9%
1970	82.2%
1972	81.4%
1975 1)	79.7%
1979 1)	81.2%
1983 1)	81.0%
1987 1)	76.4%
1991 1)	72.1%
1995 1)	71.9%
1999 1)	68.3%
1) % only Finnish citizens
resident in Finland