Yle's latest presidential poll forecasts that the winner of the presidential election will be either Pekka Haavisto (Green) or Alexander Stubb (NCP).
In a survey conducted by polling firm Taloustutkimus, 29 percent of respondents supported Haavisto and 22 percent supported Stubb for the first round of voting in the presidential election.
In a second-round scenario, the poll showed Haavisto was narrowly more popular than Stubb with a virtual tie of 51 percent to 49 percent.
Compared to September's poll the gap between Haavisto and Stubb appears to be narrowing.
The first round of the presidential election will be held in late January 2024, with a possible second round in February.
A longtime Green Party member, Haavisto is campaigning as an independent candidate and has collected the necessary amount of supporter cards. While he is running independently, the Green Party has endorsed his candidacy. Stubb is the formal candidate of the National Coalition Party, which Prime Minister Petteri Orpo leads.
The polling firm Taloustutkimus' CEO Jari Pajunen said that it looks "very difficult" for other candidates to get past Haavisto and Stubb into the second round.
The Governor of the Bank of Finland Olli Rehn came third in the poll with 14 percent of respondents supporting him. The fourth most popular candidate was Mika Aaltola, who received 10 percent of support. Speaker of Parliament Jussi Halla-aho (Finns) was the favourite candidate among eight percent of respondents.
In a second-round matchup scenario between the other candidates and the frontrunners, Haavisto and Stubb beat out their other opponents by margins of at least 10 percentage points.
Both left-wing candidates, Jutta Urpilainen, the likely candidate of the Social Democratic Party, and Li Andersson of the Left Alliance, fell outside the top five.
Polling firm Taloustutkimus conducted the poll between 4 and 9 October. The first question (round one of the elections) was answered by 1,368 respondents. The maximum margin of error for the survey is around ± 2.2 percentage points.
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