The result was a victory for Urho Kekkonen, who won on the first ballot.

[3] Kekkonen's two opponents, the centre-right National Coalition Party's candidate Director of the National Commercial Bank Matti Virkkunen and the populist Finnish Rural Party's leader Veikko Vennamo, criticized him for governing Finland in a too autocratic way.

Vennamo in particular accused Kekkonen of pursuing a too dependent and servile foreign policy towards the Soviet Union.

Since almost thirty per cent of the eligible Finnish voters abstained from voting, there was some underlying discontent with the presidential candidates, or Kekkonen's wide lead over his two opponents.

Notably, the National Coalitioners and Ruralists - both opposition parties at the time - gained clearly higher percentages of the popular vote than in the 1966 Finnish parliamentary elections.