Interactive: Haavisto’s great challenge

The first round of the presidential election in Finland was held on Sunday. It was a super-exciting race with Sauli Niinistö coming out on top, but with Pekka Haavisto of the Green Party as the great surprise. Haavisto finished second, just before the grand ol’ man of the Center Party, Paavo Väyrynen.

Haavisto is having great momentum and is quickly rising in the polls. But can he really take on Sauli Niinistö who has been the favorite for years already?

With this interactive visualization I will show that Pekka Haavisto face a great challenge in the second round. In the first round he got 570.000 votes. Niinistö got twice as much. 1,4 million voters will have to find a new candidate in the second round. Haavisto will have to get about 70 percent of those votes, which won’t be easy considering he is the liberal alternative of the two finalists and a lot of the undecided voters are conservatives.

Anyway here is the visualization. It lets you drag and drop the votes of the candidates that didn’t make it to the second round. Hopefully it gives you an idea of the effort that Haavisto will have to go through to stand a chance. But who knows? He has surprised us once already.

Open interactive visualization in new window.