The Finish Foreign Minister, Ms Tarja Halonen, a Social Democrat, moved closer yesterday to becoming Finland's first woman president, winning the first round of presidential elections that have turned into a battle of the sexes.
With 94 per cent of the vote counted, support for Ms Halonen stood at 39.7 per cent, followed by the opposition leader, Mr Esko Aho, on 35 per cent.
Mr Aho and Ms Halonen are certain to face each other in a run-off on February 6th to settle who will replace outgoing President Martti Ahtisaari for a six-year term.
Two other prominent women candidates, the Conservative Ms Riitta Uosukainen, and the former UN envoy to Bosnia, Ms Elisabeth Rehn, were well behind with 12.8 and 7.8 per cent respectively. The remaining three candidates got less than 4 per cent.
Mr Aho welcomed the result, but said the run-off would be a tough race. "An entire new election will now start," he said. "We are back at square one." Mr Aho, a former prime minister and leader of the rural-based Centre Party, was an underdog in the early stages of the campaign, but appealed to conservative voters scared of Ms Halonen's radical past and trade union links.
A single mother and a former left-wing radical who quit the church, Ms Halonen also fared poorly early in the campaign, but has cornered women voters in recent weeks as gender not politics began playing a key role. Ms Halonen said she was pleased with her result, adding she believed a momentum was building up behind her.
Surveys before the vote showed women across the political spectrum were determined to vote for a female president in this election after their candidate, Ms Rehn, lost in 1994 to Mr Ahtisaari.
The outgoing president, who as European Union envoy played a key diplomatic role last year in ending the conflict over Kosovo, is the big absentee from the race.
Mr Ahtisaari decided not to stand for a second six-year term after the Social Democrats refused to re-nominate him as their candidate without a primary, later won by Ms Halonen.
The presidency is the last male bastion of power in Finland, even though gender equality is far advanced in this egalitarian Nordic nation of five million.
Finnish women were the first in Europe to get the right to vote, in 1906. Today they earn nearly as much as men and have made huge inroads into politics without the help of quota systems used in other European countries.
Both Ms Halonen and Mr Aho did their best not to clash in the campaign, stressing similar views on foreign and defence policy - one area where the recently clipped presidential powers remain strong.
The campaign was dubbed a "beauty contest" by local media because of the muted debate.
But some said security brought by membership of the EU after Cold War isolation and six years of robust economic growth have muted debate in this consensus-minded society.
Financial markets largely ignored the election, given the president's lack of power over economic policies. By 11.30 a.m. yesterday Finnish news agency FNB estimated that the turnout was already higher than the 65.2 per cent registered by the end of voting in the March parliamentary elections.
By 5.00 p.m. the turnout had reached 76 per cent even in rural areas such as Tyrjaensaari in eastern Finland, an official at the area's only polling station said.
To the north, near the Artic Circle in Lapland, snowploughs had cleared heavy falls of snow to allow voters to get to the stations, a Finnish agency reported.
Mr Ahtisaari, who voted at around 11.00 a.m. with his wife Evva in the Meilahti constituency in northern Helsinki, said he had faith in the Finnish people being capable of choosing a new head of state independently.
His comments appeared to be a dismissal of fears expressed by minor candidates over the influence of early opinion polls. The presidential campaign had been conducted "correctly", he said.