Authors

• Grönlund, Kimmo (Åbo Akademi University. Social Science Research Institute)

Keywords

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

Abstract

This survey charted the political views of eligible voters in the 2011 Finnish parliamentary elections. The data were collected in both Finnish and Swedish. This dataset contains the interviews in Finnish (see FSD2726 for the data on Swedish-speaking population). Questions in the interview are for the most part the same in both datasets; the questions about language policy differ somewhat and there were added questions about language for Swedish-speakers. The data are also available in Swedish.

The respondents' interest in politics and frequency of discussing political and societal matters were first investigated. Views were probed on whether they felt closer to one political party than the others. The respondents were asked to what extent they agreed with several statements relating to Finnish politics and society (e.g. whether important national issues should be decided in a referendum more often and whether the second official language should be an obligatory subject at school).

Perceptions on the performance of the government and trust in different institutions and persons (e.g. the president, politicians, police) were examined. The final set of questions focused on the respondents' voting habits in the latest parliamentary elections. They were asked whether they had voted, when they had voted, to which party their candidate belonged, whether the party or candidate was more important when voting and how much certain reasons affected party choice.

Background variables included, among others, the respondent's gender, year of birth, highest level of education, religiosity, economic activity and occupational status, household composition, employment status, financial circumstances of family, language spoken at home, proficiency in Swedish, languages used in the neighbourhood, language spoken at work or studies, and region of residence (NUTS3).