Authors

• Borg, Sami (University of Tampere. Finnish Social Science Data Archive)
• Paloheimo, Heikki (University of Tampere. Department of Political Science and International Relations)

Keywords

constituencies, elections, parliamentary candidates, parliamentary elections, political attitudes, political participation, political support, voting

Abstract

In this election survey, residents in small Finnish constituencies (Southern Savonia, North Karelia, and Lapland) were interviewed after the 2007 parliamentary elections. The same set of questions was also used in the face-to-face interview survey archived at the FSD (FSD2269 Parliamentary Elections 2007).

The respondents were first asked about whether they were interested in political matters, what their party preference was, and whether they had voted in general elections since the year 2000. They were also asked to name objectives which the recently elected members of parliament in their constituency should focus on, and to assess the performance of the previous government led by Matti Vanhanen. The respondents' views were charted by presenting them with a set of attitudinal statements on democracy, electoral alliances, whether the members of parliament from their constituency had a say in political decisions, personification of politics, voting, parties, and candidates.

In addition, the respondents were asked whether they had voted in the 2007 parliamentary elections, and if not, reasons for abstaining from voting. Those who had voted were asked which party's candidate they had voted for, what their voting decision was based on, and whether they considered the party or the candidate to be more important as regards voting. They were also asked whether they had voted for a candidate of their own gender, how old their candidate was, and whether they had voted for the same candidate before.

Background variables included the respondent's gender, year of birth, marital status, education, occupational status, region of residence, constituency, and annual household gross income.