Turnout: 72.00%
About this election
Finland held parliamentary elections on 2 April 2023 in a tight three-way race. The conservative National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), led by Petteri Orpo, finished first with 20.82% and 48 seats, ahead of the national-conservative Finns Party on 20.06% and 46 seats. Prime Minister Sanna Marin's Social Democrats actually increased their vote to 19.95% but came third with 43 seats. The Centre Party fell further to 11.29% and 23 seats; the Greens (13), the Left Alliance (11), the Swedish People's Party (9) and the Christian Democrats (5) took the rest. Turnout was 72.6%.
The election was a verdict on Sanna Marin's high-profile five-party centre-left government, which had steered Finland through the COVID-19 pandemic and, decisively, through the application to join NATO after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Marin was personally popular, but mounting public debt and the cost of the welfare state gave the right a powerful line of attack.
The 200-seat Eduskunta is elected by open-list proportional representation (d'Hondt) in 13 districts, with no national threshold and one Åland seat. Voters back an individual candidate, and that vote also counts for the party list. The closeness of the top three parties in 2023 — separated by less than a percentage point — made the seat allocation across districts unusually consequential.
The three leading forces were the National Coalition Party (Petteri Orpo), the Finns Party (Riikka Purra) and the SDP (Sanna Marin). The Centre Party continued its decline, while the Greens, the Left Alliance, the Swedish People's Party and the Christian Democrats made up the rest of a familiar multi-party field.
Fiscal sustainability dominated: the National Coalition and the Finns Party both campaigned for spending cuts to curb public debt, while the SDP defended welfare spending and emphasised Marin's record. Immigration, climate targets and labour shortages were also prominent. The result was widely described as too close to call until the final count.
Although the SDP held up well, the overall balance shifted right, and Petteri Orpo formed a right-wing coalition of the National Coalition Party, the Finns Party, the Swedish People's Party and the Christian Democrats, announced in June 2023. Bringing the Finns Party back into government, the new cabinet set out an agenda of fiscal consolidation and tighter immigration policy.
The vote ended Marin's premiership despite her party's improved vote, illustrating how Finland's proportional system rewards relative, not absolute, performance. It also entrenched the Finns Party as a governing-scale force and shifted Finnish policy to the right at the moment the country was joining NATO.
In 2019 the SDP had narrowly won and led a five-party centre-left coalition, latterly under Marin. The 2023 result reversed that, handing the initiative to the centre-right — the third consecutive election in which the largest party changed.
Sanna Marin entered the election as an internationally recognised figure who had led Finland through the pandemic and, most consequentially, through its rapid decision to apply for NATO membership after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Her personal standing was high, but her government's increased spending and borrowing became the central target of the opposition.
The defining argument of the campaign was the sustainability of Finland's public finances. The National Coalition and the Finns Party both called for substantial spending cuts, while the SDP defended the welfare state and argued the books could be balanced more gradually. That framing favoured the right and shaped the austerity-leaning programme of the government that followed.
Turnout was 72.6%, again near the top of the recent range, underlining how genuinely competitive the three-way race had become.
Statistics Finland (Tilastokeskus) and the Ministry of Justice election results service — stat.fi.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.