Counting of the Election Results

Counting the advance votes

The electoral district committees begin counting the advance votes on election day at 3 p.m. at the earliest (on special grounds earlier, however at the earliest at 12 o’clock). The brown election envelopes sent from the municipalities are opened and the ballots within them counted.

Preliminary count of the votes cast on election day

As soon as the doors of the polling stations have been closed at 8 p.m. the election committee begins a preliminary count of the votes. The committee opens the ballot box, counts the ballots within it, and notes down the votes of the candidates in a particular election protocol. Immediately thereafter the committee informs the central election committee of the municipality of the votes of the candidates, i.e. of the election results in the voting district. The central committee again enters the results in the central calculation system in the Election Information System of the Ministry of Justice. Finally, the election committee seals the ballots in a parcel and delivers it to the electoral district committee before Monday morning 9 a.m.

The results in the entire country

The Electoral District Committee of Helsinki combines the results of the electoral districts to establish the results in the entire country.

Determination of the Election Results

The so-called d’Hondt method is used to determine the election results. Thus, in the first stage of the calculation the total number of votes of each group, i.e.

each party which does not belong to an electoral alliance,
each electoral alliance,
each joint list, and
each constituency association which does not belong to a joint list,

is counted. Parties which have formed en electoral alliance are treated as a single group, as are constituency associations on a joint list. In the second stage of the calculation the candidates in each group are ranked in order of their personal number of votes. In the third stage each candidate is accorded a comparative index, i.e. the candidate who has received most personal votes is accorded an index which equals the total number of votes of the group, the second best candidate half of that, the thirdb best a third, the fourth best a fourth, and so on. In the final stage all candidates within the electoral district are listed in order from best to worst according to their comparative index, and the 13 members are chosen according to the order on this list.

Check count and confirmation of the election results

The electoral district committees begin controlling the preliminary count on the Monday that follows the election day at 9 a.m. The results of the check count have to be ready by Wednesday 6 p.m., when the electoral district committees confirm the final results within the electoral districts and notify the results to the Electoral District Committee of Helsinki. The Electoral District Committee of Helsinki confirms the election results in the entire country and issues letters of appointment to the new representatives.

Election Results

Results of the European Parliamentary elections in all Member States

Results of the European Parliamentary elections in Finland:

Result and Information Service of the Ministry of Justice (Results and statistics in a nutshell since 2003)
Statisticts on election results by Statistics Finland (detailed results and statistics since 1983)
Election statistics prior to 1983 can be found in Official Statistics of Finland (OSF) by Statistics Finland
Election statistics by the Population Register Centre (eligible voters by age group, eligible voters living abroad etc.)