Suomen Keskustan alueellinen kannatuspohja

Författare

• Tatu Vanhanen

Abstract

The problem discussed in this article concerns the regional and social basis of the Finland’s Centre Party. Originally, the party was established to represent the interests of farmers and rural people, but, since the 1970s, its electoral support has not declined, although the percentage of agricultural population has. In this article, the Centre Party’s electoral support is compared with the percentage of agricultural population in 409 Finnish municipalities. The results of correlation analysis show that the percentage of agricultural population still explains 55 per cent of the statistical variation in the Centre’s electoral support, whereas its support among non-agricultural voters seems to be completely independent of the share of the agricultural population.