The Union of Freethinkers of Finland collects opinions of parliamentary elections candidates through its online candidate selector. Data collection started in 2007. The selector is made available every four years during parliamentary elections campaigning and voting. Candidates answer questions which focus on the status and teaching of religion in primary and lower secondary schools, and the status of the church in Finnish society, including taxation rights and the right to organise burial services and weddings. Other users can answer the same questions in the selector interface, and can search and filter candidate responses.
This dataset contains responses to questions in the voting advice application of the Union of Freethinkers of Finland for the Finnish parliamentary elections 2023 by candidates as well as users of the application. Questions concerned, for instance, whether blasphemy should remain prohibited in the Finnish Criminal Code, whether circumcision of boys should be legal or illegal, whether the church should have the right to collect tax, whose responsibility burials and maintenance of cemeteries should be, how religion should be incorporated into primary school curricula, ritual slaughter, and whether employers should have the right to prohibit the use of certain items of clothing, such as a headscarf which covers the head and hair (hijab), at work.
Background variables for parliamentary candidates included name, political party, electoral district, age, gender, candidate number and voting result. Background variables for users of the voting advice application included political party filter set by the user and electoral district.
670 of the candidates for the 2023 Parliamentary elections recorded their answers on the Union of Freethinkers' voting advice application. The questions were mailed to the political parties on 12.12.2022. The voting advice application opened on 8.2.2023 and will be available at least until the end of 2024. The database contains the answers until the polling stations closed. The voting advice application users from the same ip address can be identified by the variable bv10b (user number).