Finland will elect a new president in the coming weeks, with advance voting for the first round kicking off this week ahead of polling day proper on Sunday 28 January.
Yle's senior political correspondent Ari Hakahuhta tells APN that there is one big topic on Finns' minds as they prepare to cast their ballot.
"It's foreign policy, stupid," Hakahuhta says, a reference to the famous phrase, 'it's the economy stupid', coined during Bill Clinton's successful 1992 US presidential election campaign.
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Hakahuhta added that voters will also be assessing the morals and values of each candidate, as the president is often viewed as an ethical bellwether for many Finns.
This is a viewpoint echoed by Jenni Karimäki, a political researcher at the University of Helsinki.
"I think that in many cases the ideological or party political background of the candidate speaks about their values... this perhaps bears a lot more weight when people decide between candidates than actual security and foreign policy issues," Karimäki tells APN.
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