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Tarja Halonen: Votes
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Halonen's support for the second term was strong. She received 46% of the first round vote in the election. Sauli Niinistö (of the National Coalition Party) was second with 24%. They faced each other in a runoff on January 29, 2006, where Halonen was re-elected with 51.8% of the vote against Mr. Niinistö's 48.2%. The re-election was a close call. She led in the advance voting, but as more debates were shown in the media, she eventually received fewer votes on the actual voting day than Mr. Niinistö did.
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Halonen got 46 % of the votes in the first round (on January 16). Niinistö was the most successful at narrowing the gap with Halonen. Polls ranked his support at about 20 % throughout the campaign, but his final tally was over 24 %. Matti Vanhanen got 18 % of the votes. Niinistö's success was based in presenting himself as the real alternative and the genuine challenger.
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Halonen, 62, has such a commanding lead in opinion surveys that she is expected to win more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, making a second round unnecessary. A Social Democrat, she is widely seen as Finland's most popular politician since its independence in 1917.
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