Record high advance voting abroad
According to preliminary data, a total of 47,524 voters cast their ballots in the advance voting arranged at Finland’s diplomatic missions abroad for the first round of Finland’s presidential election. The number of voters is an all-time record. The number of voters rose by more than 50 per cent compared to the figure for the first round of the presidential election in 2006. At that time, 30,298 people voted at diplomatic missions and 291 people voted on board ships.
In all, the number of people entitled to vote and living abroad permanently came this year to over 230,000.
Advance voting for the presidential election was organised this year in 90 countries, where there were a total of 254 polling stations. This year there were 17 more polling stations than in the presidential election of 2006.
The possibility to vote was also organised for the crew of some Finnish ships. A little over 250 votes were obtained from ship crew members.
As before, the most advance votes, in all 12,040, were cast in Sweden. The second highest number of votes, 7,361, was cast in Spain. The next was Germany with 3,287 votes cast, followed by the United States with 3,279 votes, the UK with 2,851 votes, Thailand with 2,161 votes and Belgium with 1,475 votes.