Finnish parliamentary election – April 19th 2015

[politicus]

I noticed that there isn't a thread for this election, so I decided to start one.

Thanks a lot. I have been waiting for this one, but didn't want to set up a thread with so many Finnish posters on the forum.

[politicus]

Any non-Centre Party based coalition possibilities?

Not that I see any, but it would make the election more interesting.

[politicus]

Why is KOK losing support?! Alexander Stubb seems like an intelligent och decent man.

Well, he looks insane och tokig ..

[politicus]

It's hard to think of a government that doesn't eventually gain a reputation for being out-of-touch. People like to think that there are good solutions that make them personally better-off but the government doesn't care.

Maybe, but there is a reason Conservative parties are especially prone to aquire  such a reputation.

[politicus]

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.

[politicus]

If I was an average Finnish citizen, who should I vote for?

One of the strangest questions asked around here.

Do you mean a median voter? (middle aged, public sector employed, suburban, home owner, average income etc.?)

And should according to our (or the Finnish posters?) personal preferences or what?

[politicus]

The Finnish National Broadcaster YLE has uploaded four-minute interviews from nearly all candidates in the election: over 1,800 interviews all in all. It's quite a project. I wonder, if something like it has been attempted in other countries on such a scale? Finland's open list system of course puts emphasis on candidates in a way that a closed list system does not.

I can put the link here, if someone's interested, but the interviews are of course in Finnish or (in the case of Swedish People's Party and Åland candidates) in Swedish: Election Gallery

Perhaps predictably, the candidates that get the most views are those, who come off as quirky or ill prepared. This Pirate Party candidate from Lapland has gotten more than 200,000 views in the election gallery: video in Youtube with English subtitles (from the subtitle button).

"My pet gerbil used cannabis and died of an overdose. I'd like to have a moment of silence for Tero"

"How big is your budget?" - "Do you mean under the counter?"

"What is the biggest problem in Finland?" - "I am hungry" - "And Finland?" - "I am in Finland... and I am hungry"

LOL

Absolutely brilliant and quintessentially Finnish..

[politicus]

Different parties' candidates' answer to the claim "Finland needs more immigrants" in the MTV (biggest commercial TV station; not to be confused with Music Television) voting aid application, proportion of candidates to answer "yes":

Swedish People's Party 93%
Green League 88%
National Coalition Party 66%
Left Alliance 63%
Social Democrats 50%
Centre Party 43%
Christian Democrats 42%
Finns Party 3%
(source)

So we can see that the Finns Party is in its own league with regard to criticism of immigration among the parliamentary parties. Also of note: NCP is more open to immigration than SDP. The question didn't differentiate between types of immigration.

Why does the SPP favour immigration? Do they expect immigrants to choose the easier learnt Swedish rather than Finnish? (only half joking..)

[politicus]

Different parties' candidates' answer to the claim "Finland needs more immigrants" in the MTV (biggest commercial TV station; not to be confused with Music Television) voting aid application, proportion of candidates to answer "yes":

Swedish People's Party 93%
Green League 88%
National Coalition Party 66%
Left Alliance 63%
Social Democrats 50%
Centre Party 43%
Christian Democrats 42%
Finns Party 3%
(source)

So we can see that the Finns Party is in its own league with regard to criticism of immigration among the parliamentary parties. Also of note: NCP is more open to immigration than SDP. The question didn't differentiate between types of immigration.

It's surprising that the NCP is more pro-immigration than the Left Alliance.

Business-friendly = wants an abundant supply of labour to promote growth. Has wealthy and well educated voters whose jobs are not threatened by immigrants and live in upscale neighbourhoods where increased crime and other nuisances don't become a problem.

Left Alliance has some working class voters who may face some of the less nice consequences of immigration.

[politicus]

Päivi Räsänen, leader of the Christian Democrats, is trying to outdo the Green Left when it comes to increasing immigration:

"We have to bear our responsibility of solidarity in this world," she said. "Because we know that there are billions (sic) of refugees all around the world who don’t find a home, and Finland can offer a home to them."
http://yle.fi/uutiset/rasanen_fighting_to_stop_gay_marriage_and_jihadism_but_pro-immigration/7888344

Billions of refugees would make Finland a bit crowded..

Her voters were some of the most immigrantion-sceptic in the poll you posted. Does that go for the party membership as well?

[politicus]

Yeah, the answers to the immigration related question that I posted were actually answers from candidatesstanding for election. Räsänen seems to be more open to immigration than many in the party's base. She has done some flip-flopping on the issue: prior to the 2011 election she said that Finland should favour Christian refugees over non-Christian refugees, but she hasn't done anything about that, even though she's the Minister of the Interior, who has refugee issues in her portfolio.

Okay, forgot about that.

[politicus]

Is it true that the Finnish Greens are economically right of the SDP?

The voters or the leadership?

Either way, not really. They have curiously rightist rhetoric and are less resistant to alliances with the right-wing parties than say, the Swedish Greens; but their policies on paper are not highly different from LA. (They're big Basic Income fans, for example).

I think they are quite open to the flexicurity model, which a lot of more 'statist' and union allied Social Democrats may oppose.

Who are they?

An educated guess is that LA is suppouse supposed to be short for Left Alliance.

ftfy

And apparently you missed this post:

Oh I know, I meant left alliance

As a Dane I am so used to LA being Liberal Alliance that it confuses me when it stands for something left wing-ish.

[politicus]

It seems that Helsinki has the largest amount of uncounted votes.   That should work to the advantage of the Centre and against True Finns (should I still call them that ?)

They insist upon being called "the Finns Party" because "True" is one of several possible translations of the relevant word, while it carries a certain chauvinistic connotation that I suspect they were not really going for- I believe it could also be translated as "Ordinary Finns" which sounds rather different.

We settled on Average Joe Finns (or Average Jukka Finns) in an earlier discussion of it.

[politicus]

Åland 1 seat

To whom?

[politicus]

Both seem to be relatively moderate/secularized.

The last sentence is horrible.

Yeah, moderate secular Muslims are truly HPs

[politicus]

Well, what I meant was that they don't seem very religious. Both are liberal on social issues and the woman doesn't wear a headscarf, for example.

Turkish Greenies and female Afghan SDs generally are

[politicus]

We should just drop the moderate and/or secular vs. fundi and/or Islamist thing and start talking about domesticated versus wild Muslims. Might as well drop that PC nonsense.

[politicus]

Well, what I meant was that they don't seem very religious. Both are liberal on social issues and the woman doesn't wear a headscarf, for example.

Islam is a religion, not a political movement.

Islam does not have a separation between the secular world and the spiritual world as Christianity does (Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's). Mentioning that the people in question do not adhere to the political side of Islam is a relevant fact in a political discussion. In Sweden we've had islamist MPs like Mehmet Kaplan (now minister of housing) and Abdizirak Waberi with close contacts to the Muslim brotherhood.

Even if I were to accept your (patently wrong) distinction with Christianity, you would be hard-pressed to find one with Judaism. Be my guest, please, continue.

How? It is in the Bible and while churches haven't always been willing to obey by this it certainly gives a very different theological basis for how Christians view their relationship to the state and has formed the basis for Western secularism. Islam provides much more detailed instructions for how to create a society and how to live your life than Christianity, which only gives us vague guiding points.

[politicus]

It's amusing that Hifly would say something like that, seeing as he is one of the forum's most despised and ridiculed posters.

Well, a white man ordering a brownie around. Everything is normal.

My German last name, of course, is the testimony of the times before his ancestors ordered my ancestors into what would become Russia. I guess, mine were insufficiently domesticated.

Hifly is (partly?) Iranian. You are in all likelyhood the Whitie here.

[politicus]

Hmm...interesting.  You see that ring of blue around a dot of yellow - I'm assuming that that's Helsinki proper surrounded by rich suburbs that would naturally vote for the center-right.

Yellow is the Swedish Peoples Party.