ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the propensity of Finnish voters to evaluate and choose individual candidates over political parties in the period from 2003 to 2019. The findings indicate that both party and candidate play a significant role in voters’ decision-making processes. While a slight majority tends to believe that the party holds more importance than the candidate when casting their vote, they also express the view that their choice of candidate would differ if the candidate were affiliated with a different party. Nevertheless, Finnish voters still highly value the opportunity to exercise a preference vote for an individual candidate. More than half of the respondents disagree with the notion of voting for a party exclusively, and a large majority consider candidate voting personally important. The relationship between gender, age, education, political interest, party identification, and left–right position in explaining candidate considerations in voters’ decision-making processes yields mixed results.
