Helsinki - Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen's Centre Party dropped to third place after local elections held Sunday, final tallies showed Monday.

Vanhanen noted that his party had probably suffered from being in office and said election results differed.

The Centre Party dropped 2.7 percentage points compared to the 2004 local elections, scoring 20.1 per cent.

Analysts including Goran Djupsund, professor of political science and political communication at Abo Akademi University, did not rule out a shake-up of the party leadership.

Those views were echoed in an leader article in the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper that concluded that the result was "a big blow" to the premier. "Vanhanen has not been able to use his position as a prime minister but rather the contrary: when he has led the party, the Centre Party has taken blow after blow," the paper commented.

The conservative National Coalition Party, which is part of the Vanhanen's ruling four-party coalition, scored its best local election result with 23.4 per cent, gaining 1.6 percentage points.

Party leader Jyrki Katainen, also finance minister, attributed the success to the party's "positive" campaign.

The opposition Social Democrats were second with 21.2 per cent of the vote, dropping 2.9 percentage points compared to four years ago.

Party leader Jutta Urpilainen, elected in June, said the result was an improvement on the 2007 parliamentary elections when the Social Democrats placed third among the big three and went into opposition.

The populist True Finns stood out as the big winner, securing 5.4 per cent of the vote, up 4.5 percentage points on the 2004 results. Party leader Timo Soini collected over 8,000 votes in Espoo, the second-best result nationwide.

The polls were held after a low-key election campaign.

Vanhanen's two other coalition partners, the Green League increased their share of the vote to 8.9 percent - up 1.5 percentage points to become the country's fourth largest - while the minority Swedish People's Party dropped 0.5 percentage points to 4.7 per cent.

The Left Alliance was on 8.8 per cent, just as in the parliamentary elections 2007 while the Christian Democrats kept their 4.2 per cent.

Turnout increased to 61.3 per cent compared to 58.6 per cent in 2004. Election officials said some 24 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in advance.

Almost 4.2 million voters were eligible to vote. (dpa)