HELSINKI (AP) – Ex-Prime Minister Alexander Stubb is projected to win Finland’s presidential election runoff on Sunday against former Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.
Finnish public broadcaster YLE projected that center-right candidate Stubb of the conservative National Coalition Party wins the Finnish presidency with 51.4% of the votes, while independent candidate Haavisto from the green left will get 48.6% of the votes.
YLE´s prediction, highly accurate in previous elections, is a mathematical model calculated on the basis of advance ballots and a certain number of Sunday´s votes under official data provided by the Legal Register Centre. Exit polls aren´t generally used in Finland.
The projected result would make Stubb, who was prime minister in 2014-2015 and has held at several other Cabinet posts, the 13th president of Finland since the Nordic country’s independence in 1917.
Stubb, 55, and Haavisto, 65, were the main contenders in the election where over 4 million eligible voters picked a successor to hugely popular President Sauli Niinistö, whose second six-year term expires in March. He wasn’t eligible for reelection.
Sunday’s runoff was required because none of the original nine candidates got more than half of the votes in Jan. 28 first round where Stubb emerged at the top with 27.3% of the votes and Haavisto was the runnerup with 25.8%.
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