Finnish parliamentary election, 1945

Finland
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Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 17 and 18 March 1945. The broad-based centre-left government of Prime Minister Juho Kusti Paasikivi (National Coalition/Independent) remained in office after the elections.

Background

The communists could, for the first time since 1929, freely present their candidates. Through the Finnish People's Democratic League (SKDL), they were able to win over a large section of Social Democratic voters. The Patriotic People's Movement (IKL) had been banned by the time of the election. Prime Minister Paasikivi urged in February 1945 Finnish voters to elect "new faces" to Parliament, which they certainly did: almost half of the 200 deputies were new. Some wartime deputies, including Social Democrat Väinö Tanner and Agrarian Viljami Kalliokoski, decided voluntarily not to seek re-election, because under the new political climate (Finland's desire to establish friendly relations with the Soviet Union), their wartime political activities, including their association with the informal Finnish-German military alliance, looked suspicious. The right-wing and centrist parties had to campaign carefully, so as not to appear anti-Soviet, while the Communists could loudly and vigorously accuse the right-wing and centrist parties of accepting their ban from open political activity, which had lasted from 1930 to 1944. One major economic issue in these elections was the continued scarcity of goods caused by the wartime rationing. Communists promised the impoverished voters a quick improvement in their living standards, and also other major parties promised more prosperity in the starting peacetime. These promises were made despite the still limited Finnish foreign trade - World War II would only end in Europe in May and in Asia in September - and the heavy burden which the Soviet Union's war reparations payments imposed on the Finnish economy.^[1][2][3]

Results

References

Elections and referendums in Finland
Parliamentary elections	1863 1867 1872 1877 1882 1885 1888 1891 1894 1900 1901 1905 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1913 1916 1917 1919 1922 1924 1927 1929 1930 1933 1936 1939 1945 1948 1951 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1972 1975 1979 1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007 2011 2015 2019
Municipal elections	1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1928 1930 1933 1936 1945 1947 1950 1953 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2017
Presidential elections	1919 1925 1931 1937 1940 1943 1944 1946 1950 1956 1962 1968 1973 1978 1982 1988 1994 2000 2006 2012 2018
European elections	1996 1999 2004 2009 2014 2019
Referendums	1931 1994
Elections in brackets were not public elections