The incumbent, Tarja Halonen, carried the runoff, taking 51.8 % of the vote. The runner-up, former minister of finance Sauli Niinistö was left with 48.2 % of the vote. The margin was roughly 113,000 votes.

The next Late Night with Conan O’Brien will be interesting to watch.

The Finnish presidential runoff is on Sunday. Absentee votes were gathered between Wednesday last week and Tuesday this week (abroad only until Saturday last week).

Absentee voting. There was at least one absentee voting station in each municipality. It was also possible to vote in advance abroad at most Finland’s diplomatic missions. The elector signs in at the desk. where the official checks their identity and hands them a ballot. If the polling station has access to the online elector registry, it is used to verify that the elector is enfranchised. The elector enters the polling booth, where they draw their candidate’s number on the ballot, and then fold it so that the number is not visible. They then go back to the desk, where another official stamps the folded ballot and hands the elector a small brown envelope. The elector puts the folded ballot inside the envelope and seals it. Meanwhile, the officials have prepared a document which lists the elector’s name, the address of their home municipality. One of the officials and the elector both sign this document, affirming that the voting was handled by the book. The sealed brown envelope, containing the folded and stamped ballot, and the document are put inside another, yellow envelope, which the officials later mail to the home municipality of the elector. The officials also make a record that the elector has voted in the elector registry, if it is accessible.

Institutional voting. Electors who are admitted to a hospital or live in a rest-home or are similarly temporarily or permanently living in an institution can vote in their institution. A peripatetic advance polling station visits each such instititution at least once during the absentee voting period. The vote procedure is as described above.

Home voting. Electors who are unable to go to a regular polling station can preorder home voting. A peripatetic polling station visits each such home, allowing those electors to vote according to the advance voting procedure. In home voting, the elector is allowed to select one person to monitor the voting procedure (but not look at the number in the ballot!) as their personal witness. The witness also signs the advance polling document.

Checking advance polling votes. Each municipality hosts a municipal central election committee. The committee, or its staff, open all the yellow envelopes, check that the advance voting document is properly filled and has no irregularities. The brown envelope is inspected without opening it. If the document is irregular (e.g. missing signatures, missing name of elector) or the brown envelope carries irregular markings (especially markings that identify the elector or a candidate), the vote is set aside and disregarded for the purposes of ballot counting. A vote is also set aside and disregarded if there is evidence of dishonest voting in that particular case (such as two separate votes by the same elector). All other brown envelopes are gathered unopened into a big pile and separated from the advance voting document at this time; the committee also makes a record in the elector registry that an elector has voted, if there isn’t already such a note and they actually did vote in the absentee balloting. The brown envelopes are sent to the regional election committee.

Election day. Any elector who hasn’t voted in advance can vote in their local polling station during election day. The procedure is identical to the advance voting procedure up and until the folded ballot is stamped. After that, the elector simply drops the folded ballot in the ballot box.

Preliminary vote counting. The regional election committees open the brown envelopes and count the advance votes during election day, while being out of contact with the rest of the world. Each district election committee responsible of a single ballot station during the election day count the votes they received during the day right after the polling stations close. The preliminary result is expected to be all but done after a bit more than an hour has passed since closing of the polling stations.

Official vote counting. The regional election committees receive all ballots from their region after preliminary vote count is finished. They then take the next two days to recount the votes. The result is the final, official count.

Results. The Helsinki region election committee collates the vote counts from the regional committees and announces the result of the presidential election.

Selection of the committees. Each municipal central election committee and the district election committees under it each represent as fairly as possible all the parties and other groups that fielded candidates for the previous municipal elections in that municipality. Each regional election committee represents as fairly as possible all the parties and other groups that fielded candidates for the previous parliamentary elections within the region.

Franchise. All Finnish citizens who were at least 18 years of age on the original (non-runoff) election day are enfranchised.

My involvement. I represent the Green party in my home town’s central election committee. We did the “check the advance votes” dance earlier this evening. We set aside for disregard seven votes, while over 23,000 advance votes were submitted to the Jyväskylä central election committee. We had a small staff handling most of the work during the last week, all of them town employees.

Other elections. European parliament elections are held using the same protocol. Parliamentary elections are held using the same protocol, with the difference that the elections are essentially separate for each election region (seats are allocated to regions roughly by population), though held simultaneously, and the regional election committee announces the result for its own region. Municipal elections are held using the same protocol, with the difference that each municipality has its own election (though they are all held simultaneously), and the municipal central election committee handles all the duties specified above for regional election committees (including announcing the result for its own municipality).In all of these, votes are counted using the open-list d’Hondt method.

Update: Corrected Tarja Halonen’s total vote percentage.

The preliminary count in the Finnish presidential elections is finished with the following results:

^* The difference between the current candidate and the next (upward) candidate on the list, in votes and as a percentage of the next (upward) candidate’s votes.
^† The result of the last opinion poll published before the election, commissioned by YLE and conducted by phone between 10th and 11th of January. The margin for error is 2,5 %-points for Halonen and decreases when the percentage decreases.

Since the incumbent failed to reach majority, a runoff election will be held on the 29th of January between the two best placed candidates (starred). A remarkable fact is the low number of votes that the independent candidate Arto Lahti received, for he had to get at least 20,000 people to sign their name in favour of his candidacy, while he received only 65 % of that number in votes.

It is very likely that both runoff candidates retain the votes they received today. What decides the runoff election is how the rest of the voters behave. As a quick and dirty Stetson–Harrison estimate, most of Vanhanen, Kallis and Lax’s spporters are likely to vote for Niinistö, while most of Hautala’s supporters are likely to vote for Halonen. Assuming that the “most”s cancel each other (an assumption that probably favours Niinistö), this yields an additional 22.2 %-points for Niinistö (total 46.3 %) and 3.5 %-points for Halonen (total 49.8 %). Hence it would seem that Halonen has the upper hand in runoff.

A few words on each of the eight candidates, in reverse order of popularity, follows.

Arto Lahti (b. 1949) is a professor of entrepeneurship and has experience in various positions in the private sector. He has no prior political experience and is not affiliated with a political party.

Henrik Lax (b.1946) is a Member of the European Parliament since 2004, representing the liberal Swedish People’s Party. He was a Member of the national Parliament 1987–2004. Prior to his political career, he had been a lawyer.

Bjarne Kallis (b.1945) is a Member of Parliament since 1991, representing the party currently called Christian Democrats. He has chaired his party since 1995. For most of his non-political professional life he has been a teacher and later principal in a business school.

Timo Soini (b. 1962) is a Member of Parliament since 2003, representing the right-wing populist True Finns party. He has chaired his party since 1997, which he cofounded in 1995; prior to that, he was an active member of the since-dissolved Finnish Agrarian Party.

Heidi Hautala (b. 1955) is a Member of Parliament since 2003 and before that 1991–1995. She was a Member of the European Parliament 1995–2003. She represents the evironmental-liberal Green League, a party she cofounded and later chaired 1987–1991.

Matti Vanhanen (b. 1955) is Prime Minister since 2003, representing the liberal Centre Party. He previously served as Minister of Defense in 2003. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1991. He has chaired his party since 2003.

Sauli Niinistö (b. 1948) is currently a Director at the European Investment Bank. He served as Minister of Justice 1995–1996 and Minister of Finance 1996–2003. He was a Member of Parliament 1987–2003. He represents the liberal-conservative National Coalition party, which he chaired 1994–2001. Prior to his political career, he worked as a lawyer.

Tarja Halonen (b. 1943) is the incumbent, Her Excellency the President of the Republic of Finland since 2000. Prior to her presidency, she was a member of the Social Democrat Party and had served as Minister of Social Affairs and Health 1987–1990, Minister of Nordic Cooperation 1989–1991, Minister of Justice 1990–1991 and Minister of Foreign Affairs 1995–2000. She was a Member of Parliament 1979–2000. Prior to her political career, she worked as a lawyer in a labor union.