So everyone wants to play with the Centre Party, but the Centre Party's voters are only dead keen on the Social Democrats. Some of the other patterns are interesting as well.
Not voters, local councillors.
Last week, this question was asked also on voters in a TNS Gallup poll ordered by The Foundation for Municipal Development:
http://yle.fi/uutiset/poll_finland_wants_a_red_earth_government/7868686Main finding is that there is an overall majority support for both Centre party and SDP being in the next government. The percentage of voters who want each party to be part of the government:
Centre Party 60%
Social Democrats 51%
National Coalition Party 34%
Finns Party 30%
Green League 27%
Left Alliance 24%
Swedish People's Party 19%
Christian Democrats 13%
(Don't know / can't say 18%)
So this would mean a general approval for a traditional Social Democrats - Centre Party coalition ('red earth'). The 2 can't alone form a majority government, so they'd still need to pick partners from the less popular parties.
There's an article on the poll here (in Finnish):
http://www.kaks.fi/node/7755 with details in pdf. It shows that the parties' voters have similar views as the local politicians.
- Centre and SDP voters want to see each other's party in the government, which is a strong signal for a 'red earth' coalition basis forming. Besides, SDP voters also would like to have Left Alliance and maybe the Greens in, while Centre voters are just somewhat ok with Finns Party joining. Centre preferences would result to a centrist-populist Centre-SDP-Finns coalition, for SDP supporters a left-wing Centre-SDP-Left-Greens(-Swedish Party) coalition would be fine.
- National Coalition Party voters would really love to rule together with Centre, and they'd include Swedish People's Party as the minor partner. However National Coalition isn't much liked among Centre voters, and even less within other major parties. Their preferred right-wing coalition Centre-NCP-Swedish Party (and eventually the Christian Democrats too) also isn't likely to get majority.
- For the Finns Party voters only Centre seems acceptable, with little interest for seeing any other parties in government. Conversely, of the others only Centre voters have some acceptance for having the Finns in. Due to such large disagreement between Finns and all other parties, a coalition including them would definitely be uneasy from the start.
- Both Left Alliance and Green League voters really want to have SDP in the government, Greens and Left also like each other. As neither party's voters also don't have particularly negative view on Centre, their preference is similar to SDP voters. However both parties now have certain reservations regarding government, as they both left the 'six-pack' gov't for opposition just last year.
Obviously we can't predict what the end result will look like, due to the consensus nature of Finnish politics, so that in the end almost everyone is willing to play with almost everyone. After all, almost no NCP voter wants to govern with Left Alliance and the feeling certainly is mutual, yet these two parties have been together in the government for 11 of the last 20 years.