Finnish parliamentary election – 14 April 2019

[Helsinkian]

Introduction

Finland will hold a parliamentary election on 14 April. 200 MPs will be elected using the proportional D’Hondt method with open lists. There is no national electoral threshold. Because Finland, unlike Sweden, has no method for apportioning the seats to the parties in accordance with their national support, Finland essentially has 13 separate elections in the 13 electoral districts. These vary in size from Uusimaa with 36 seats to Lapland with 7 seats (and Åland with 1 seat, but that’s a special case).

Juha Sipilä’s government coalition formed after the 2015 election originally consisted of the Centre Party, the National Coalition Party and the Finns Party. Early on in the coalition’s tenure, the surge of asylum seekers caused consternation especially within the nationalist Finns Party, the consequence of which was the election of a more radical leader for the party in 2017, which in turn led to the moderates jumping ship. After the Finns Party split in 2017, the Finns Party was kicked out of the coalition, but all of its former ministers stayed in the cabinet as members of the new Blue Reform party which consists of the Finns Party’s former moderate wing. Finns Party's downfall in government mirrors its predecessor party's fate in the 1980s; it has been said that the Finnish establishment parties prefer to "hug populists to death" (by having them participate in government as junior partners) rather than isolating them.

The coalition of Centre, NCP and Blue Reform now has 103 MPs. The relations between Centre and NCP have been strained by the coalition’s big project, the attempt to reform Finland’s social service and health care administration: this involves combining the Centre Party’s pet project of regional self-governance with the NCP’s goal of promoting the status of private care providers. The ultimate fate of this project will be decided shortly before the election. In addition, the government has been feuding with unions over various reforms concerning the labour market and unemployment benefits.

Though the current coalition consists of only centre-right parties, Finnish politics has a tradition of government coalitions crossing the left–right-divide (with even the NCP and the Left Alliance in the same coalition a few times). The leader of the largest party will almost certainly become Prime Minister. There are no permanent political blocs. Party leaders often avoid discussing coalition options before the election and rarely shut the doors on potential coalition partners beforehand; this time several parties have, however, stated that they are not interested in working with the Finns Party.

Update, 8 March: Following the failure of the bills concerning the reforms of the social services and health care system and regional councils, the Sipilä cabinet resigned on 8 March. This does not affect the date of the election, and the current ministers will continue in a caretaker role until the formation of a new coalition after the election.

Update, 8 April: An election compass by the national broadcaster YLE is available in English: https://vaalikone.yle.fi/eduskuntavaali2019/?lang=en

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Parties represented in the parliament

There are currently eleven parties or political groups represented in the parliament (the last one is not officially a party).

Centre Party (49 seats in the 2015 election; 48 now. Chair: Juha Sipilä. European Parliament group: ALDE) – Known as the Agrarian League until the 1960s, the Centre Party is first and foremost the champion of rural regions and small towns. They are the main advocate of establishing regional self-governance with elected regional councils. Centre is especially strong in the Northern part of the country (43% in the districts of Oulu and Lapland in 2015). A party with long traditions of governing, the Finnish Centre Party is a substantially larger party than the Centre Parties of Sweden or Norway. In 2015 they were the largest party and thus gained the position of Prime Minister. Though a member of ALDE and the Liberal International, the Centre Party is by no means a typical liberal party due to its rural and agrarian nature, as their rural supporters tend to fall on the conservative side on social issues. When the Finnish Parliament voted on same-sex marriage a few years ago, most Centre Party MPs voted against it (while most MPs of the supposedly conservative NCP voted in favour). This is a major difference to the Swedish Centre Party. In Northern Finland a large part of the party's base are Laestadians (a very conservative revival movement within the Lutheran church).

National Coalition Party (37 seats in 2015; 38 seats now. Chair: Petteri Orpo. EPP.) – The centre-right NCP supports free markets, lowering taxes, promoting private sector service providers in relation to the public sector, deepening EU integration and applying for NATO membership. Its support is concentrated in and around the large urban areas, and it is particularly popular among entrepreneurs, people in a managerial position, civil servants and the upper middle class. For most of the Cold War era the party was kept outside of government because it was perceived as being too “pro-West”. After 1987 they have, however, participated in all but one coalition. Historically the NCP was a party of traditional values, often associated with the Finnish conservative motto “Home, Religion, Fatherland” (political cartoonists used to depict NCP as a Lutheran preacher wearing a military helmet). This has changed in the 2000s, as the party has become more socially liberal, supporting, for example, same-sex marriage and multiculturalism. Though the party still has a social conservative wing, the liberals are now in the driver’s seat. The current chair is Petteri Orpo, Finance Minister.

Finns Party (38 seats in 2015; 17 seats now. Chair: Jussi Halla-aho. ECR.) – Internationally still sometimes known by the earlier translation of their name, True Finns, the Finns Party are a nationalist and right-wing populist party. Founded in 1995 as a successor to the defunct Rural Party, the Finns Party surged in 2011 from 5 seats to 39 on a platform of Euroscepticism and immigration criticism. They managed to hold their support in 2015, becoming the second largest party in seats (though behind the NCP in votes) and entered the Sipilä coalition with five ministers. Soon afterwards it all started to go downhill. Timo Soini, party leader for 20 years (1997–2017) who became Minister for Foreign Affairs, essentially turned the party into a doormat for the coalition partners, doing little to counter government policies unpopular among the party’s supporters and squashing dissent within the party. Soini’s autocratic leadership style, evident for a long time, now became too much for the party members who came to view Soini as an egotist who cared more about his own career than of any sort of ideology.

Sensing that he might face humiliation in the party’s leadership election in 2017, Soini decided to retire as party chair and endorsed Sampo Terho, his right-hand man in the party’s more moderate wing. The more radical wing, opposed to “Soinists” and demanding more action in countering the surge of asylum seekers, found their candidate in MEP Jussi Halla-aho. The leadership election was won by Halla-aho. The moderate wing (slightly over half of the MPs) immediately jumped ship, founded their own party (Blue Reform) and conspired with Centre and NCP to remain in the cabinet, while Finns Party went into opposition. Under Halla-aho, the Finns Party has hardened its rhetoric on immigration, and they have also formed links with the Sweden Democrats (something with which Soini had been uncomfortable).

Social Democratic Party (34 seats in 2015; 35 now. Chair: Antti Rinne. S&D.) – The main centre-left party, the Finnish Social Democrats had a historically bad election in 2015, finishing fourth. Now things are looking better for SDP, as they lead the polls. In the long-term the party is still in trouble, as their support base is the oldest of all parties. Young left-wingers seem to prefer Left Alliance or Green League over SDP. Pensioners are thus an important base for SDP, along with working-class union members. As it comes to SDP's ideology, it's pretty much standard Social Democracy / Nordic welfare state: large public sector, high taxes, extensive public services etc. Not as conservative as Danish Social Democrats but not quite as socially liberal as the Swedish Social Democrats. The party is led by Antti Rinne, former union boss who was briefly Finance Minister before the 2015 election.

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(Parties represented in the parliament, continued)

Green League (15 seats in 2015. Chair: Pekka Haavisto. Greens-EFA) – Unlike many other Green parties of Europe, the leadership of the Finnish Greens usually avoids openly calling the party left-wing. But, although they have co-operated with the bourgeois parties, their policies are often not that different from those of the Left Alliance. Among younger voters the Greens are viewed as a “trendy” party, and their support is especially high among students, academic professionals and reporters (the most popular party among reporters according to one survey). The Greens’ support is concentrated in the big cities of Southern Finland, and in Helsinki they are the second largest party. Among educated socially liberal middle-class voters in Helsinki, there are definitely a lot of people who waiver between the Greens and the NCP. In the first half of the parliament’s term the Greens made great strides in the opinion polls under the then-leader Ville Niinistö, even reaching second place in some 2017 polls. The popular leader was, however, term-limited by the party’s rules. The support then slumped under his successor Touko Aalto who later stepped down for personal reasons and was replaced by Pekka Haavisto (twice number two in Presidential elections) as an interim leader. Even with the slump, the Greens are polling clearly ahead of their 2015 result.

Left Alliance (12 seats in 2015. Chair: Li Andersson. GUE-NGL.) – The most left-wing of the parliamentary parties, Left Alliance was founded in 1990 as a successor to the old Communist Party and its front organisation, the Finnish People’s Democratic League. In the 2000s the old communists have stepped aside to make room for a younger generation in the party’s leadership. The current leaders have positioned the Left Alliance as a “red-green” or an Eco-Socialist party. The party has gone downward in all parliamentary elections of this millennium; occasional successes in Southern Finland, but falling support in their traditional strong areas in the North. Now they're slightly on the rise again.

Swedish People’s Party (10 seats in 2015 (incl. Åland). Chair: Anna-Maja Henriksson. ALDE.) A party of the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland (who are circa 5% of the population). The SPP gets over two thirds of the Swedish-speaking votes. The SPP has been a staple of Finnish coalitions, being represented in the cabinet continuously from 1979 until they were left out of the Sipilä coalition in 2015. The other parties have found the SPP an easy partner to collaborate with, as it has been willing to support all sorts of policies in return for the other governing parties’ commitment not to weaken the position of the Swedish language (which is an official language alongside Finnish). The current Finnish political debate on the position of the Swedish language is concentrated on the question of mandatory Swedish teaching in schools, with most Finnish speakers wanting to make Swedish a voluntary school subject instead of a mandatory one. However, of the political parties, the Finns Party and Blue Reform are the only ones to support that proposal. Aside from the language question, the SPP identifies itself as a market liberal and socially liberal party. The SPP sits in the ALDE group in the European Parliament together with the Centre Party. Compared to other Finnish political parties, it is, however, ideologically closer to the National Coalition Party: the SPP is economically right-wing and supports continued EU integration as well as applying for NATO membership. The single MP from the Åland islands sits in the same parliamentary group with the SPP, but the party doesn’t actually operate on Åland, as the archipelago has its own party system.

Christian Democrats (5 seats in 2015. Chair: Sari Essayah. EPP.) – A party for the religious and socially conservative people, the Christian Democrats broke away from the National Coalition Party in the 1950s. Anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage etc. The Christian Democrats used to sit in the EPP group in the European Parliament back when they had an MEP, but they currently don’t have one.

Blue Reform (did not exist in 2015; 17 seats now. Chair: Sampo Terho.) – The party founded in 2017 by the Finns Party’s former moderate wing who left the party following Jussi Halla-aho’s election as party leader and remained in the Sipilä coalition. Blue Reform has failed to gain traction, usually polling at 1–2%. While the defectors managed to take half of the Finns Party’s MPs with them, at the local level only around 10 percent of municipal councillors defected. Blue Reform faces a dilemma: if it wants to get votes from Finns Party supporters, it has to be critical of immigration and the EU, but it can’t be too anti-immigration or too anti-EU – the party’s whole raison d'être being the argument that Finns Party became too radical in these issues under Halla-aho. Consequently, Blue Reform has adopted a lot of NCP-style rhetoric on lowering taxes etc. – but here too one might ask why a voter who wants to lower taxes would choose them over the NCP. With a roughly 2% support Blue Reform might get shut out of the parliament entirely, but they could also get one or two MPs because of the large size of the Uusimaa district (36 MPs). A lot depends on whether Timo Soini is a candidate or not. (Update: Soini will not be running.) Blue Reform doesn’t have MEPs but they are members of AECR (the European Party behind the ECR group) – incidentally the Finns Party left AECR while remaining in the ECR group.

Seven Star Movement (did not exist in 2015; 1 seat now. Chair: Paavo Väyrynen.) – Väyrynen, a veteran politician from the Centre Party’s conservative wing, became disillusioned with Centre, and founded his own party, the Citizens’ Party. Having suffered a “coup” in that new party, he founded a second party, the Seven Star Movement (the name is supposedly a reference to the Big Dipper, though it’s clear that its inspiration is in Italy). This party is Eurosceptic and broadly centrist, though first and foremost it’s a one-man band for Väyrynen.

Movement Now (did not exist in 2015, 2 seats now. Chair: Harry Harkimo.) – Harkimo, a wealthy businessman (he has hosted the Finnish version of The Apprentice TV show), was elected to parliament representing NCP but left the party in 2018 to found this new “movement”. He has intentionally refused to register it as a party, and thus they will run candidates on independent lists rather than under a party banner. Movement Now is supposedly big-tent; others consider them to be market liberal, challenging the NCP from the right in that regard. They talk of e-democracy and Harkimo has suggested that he would take into account the way people have voted on the movement’s website when he’s voting in parliament.

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Parties outside the parliament

Pirate Party – Like the name suggests, part of the European pirate movement.

Communist Party of Finland – Founded in the 1990s by the Marxist-Leninists of the old Communist Party’s old-school wing who viewed the Left Alliance as too moderate.

Communist Workers’ Party – Another communist micro-party, rival of the above mentioned communist party, even though most people can’t tell, what separates the two.

Independence Party – A hard-Eurosceptic party that wants Finland to leave the EU. Though Eurosceptic, they have at least previously avoided anti-immigration rhetoric, so not properly right-wing populist.

Feminist Party – Modelled after Sweden’s Feminist Initiative.

Animal Justice Party – Modelled after the Dutch party.

Liberal Party – Freedom to Choose – Classical liberal/libertarian. Originally called “Whisky Party”, as it started as a movement against alcohol regulation and bureaucracy, they had to add “Freedom to Choose” to their new name because the earlier and now-defunct Liberal Party still exists as an association, though not as a party.

Citizens’ Party – This is the party that Väyrynen first founded and then lost in a “coup”. Eurosceptic and centrist. Without Väyrynen they seem dead on arrival.

Finnish People First – Radical-right party that views the Finns Party as too moderate even under the new leadership. They grew from anti-immigration street protests.

Usually these minor parties have little chance of success, but this time there will be a four-way electoral alliance in the Helsinki electoral district between the Pirate Party, the Feminist Party, the Liberal Party and the Animal Justice Party. That gives them collectively a reasonable chance at one seat.

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Here's the latest poll.



Probably an outlier regarding SPP, as their support is usually very stable.

[Helsinkian]

On a more serious note - is the general consensus that PS are losing so much because of the fact that Soini et al. got nothing done in government, because Halla-aho steered the party so much to the right, or both?

Definitely the first. The support started to dive in the fall of 2015 when 30,000 asylum seekers walked to Finland across the Swedish border and the government had Finnish soldiers literally carry their bags for them. In the 2017 municipal election the party got 8.8% while still under Soini's leadership. In 2011 and 2015 the party was able to turn out voters who would not have otherwise voted; now many of them may have returned to passivity.

And is the 'all-right wing' government seen as kind of an experiment given Finland's tradition of broad, generally centrist coalitions, or not so much? How popular or unpopular is the government?

The coalition base wasn't that ideological of a choice because Sipilä did consider including the SDP (in place of the Finns Party) in 2015, though that didn't happen in the end.

The last poll I saw had 41% approving of the government and 51% disapproving.

[Helsinkian]

Are NCP and SPP the only parties supporting NATO membership?

Yes. The leaders of Finns Party and Blue Reform both support NATO membership personally but in those cases it's not the position of the party.

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Laura Huhtasaari, deputy chair of the Finns Party, was interviewed by the British journalist Katie Hopkins on the theme of grooming gangs (primarily consisting of Iraqi men with a background as asylum seekers) which were recently uncovered in Finland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtgGVTFkQoE

This will surely be a theme in the election.

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Maria Lohela, who was the parliament's speaker from 2015 to 2018, first representing the Finns Party and then defecting to Blue Reform in 2017, has today defected for a second time, to Movement Now. She isn't going to run in the election, though, so the only practical consequence of this move is that she will vote against the government's healthcare and social services reform.

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New poll:

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The Finns Party published their manifesto for the election. They're going with the motto "äänestä Suomi takaisin" which means "vote [to get] Finland back". Among other things, they're calling for a ban on the burqa and the niqab.

Poll by Kantar TNS for Helsingin Sanomat (Jan to Feb):

SDP 20.8%
NCP 18.6%
Centre 14.7%
Green 13.6%
Finns 11.4%
Left 8.7%
SPP 4.3%
CD 4.0%
Blue 1.0%
Others 2.9%

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Some left-wing politicians have been talking up such a coalition. But I'd be doubtful: Finnish coalitions often try to get a large enough majority behind them to withstand the possibility of minor parties leaving the government in the middle of the term. The Social Democrats would remember that the Greens have done so twice in recent history (both times were due to their opposition to nuclear power projects). And the Left Alliance did so as well in 2014.

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Today is the last day for the parties to name their candidates. Timo Soini confirmed that he is not running. That should be the last nail in the coffin of Blue Reform.

As for Soini, good riddance – and I say that as someone who voted him for President in 2012. The whole debacle of "Blue Reform" was intended to ensure that Soini could serve out a full term as Minister for Foreign Affairs. His decision not to seek re-election just shows that he treated the new party in the same way as he treated the Finns Party when he was still in charge: a means for his own ends. The biggest suckers were of course the MPs who followed him to Blue Reform and are now left holding the short straw.

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New YLE poll. SDP gets a big lead. Centre tied with Greens. Finns Party continues to rise.

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Prime Minister Juha Sipilä has tendered his cabinet's resignation. Normally this would have happened only after the election, but Sipilä did so now because his government failed at passing the reforms concerning the social services and health care system and the regional councils; the coalition's main project was killed in the committee stage.

The cabinet's resignation does not affect the election's timetable, as we are only five weeks from election day. The Sipilä cabinet will continue as a caretaker cabinet until a new coalition is formed after the election. Nevertheless, the failure of the reforms and the resignation represent a loss of prestige for Sipilä and for the coalition parties. Basically this means that Sipilä is admitting that he has failed.

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The outgoing Defence Minister Jussi Niinistö (Blue Reform) is using yellow posters to advertise his candidacy. This has annoyed the Finns Party whose posters are traditionally yellow; the claim is that Niinistö wants the voters to think that he's still in the Finns Party.

Left Alliance wants an €800 per month universal basic income. This has been a dividing issue among left-leaning parties: while Left Alliance and the Greens have supported a basic income, SDP has been staunchly opposed to it. There was a limited experiment with a €560 basic income from 2017 to 2018; the international attention it received was quite disproportional to its limitations, however: only 2,000 people were selected, all unemployed at the time, and it was always intended to be only a short experiment. A study on the experiment concluded that its effects on the people's employment status were neutral.

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Poll for Helsingin Sanomat by Kantar-TNS (mid-February to mid-March):

SDP 21%
NCP 18.1%
Centre 14.3%
Greens 14%
Finns Party 11.1%
Left 8.9%
SPP 4.4%
CD 4.2%
Blue 1.2%
Others 2.8%

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Here are the 13 electoral districts:



01 Helsinki (22 seats)
02 Uusimaa (36 seats)
03 Finland-Proper (17 seats)
04 Satakunta (8 seats)
05 Åland (1 seat)
06 Tavastia (14 seats)
07 Pirkanmaa (19 seats)
08 South-Eastern Finland (17 seats)
09 Savonia-Karelia (15 seats)
10 Vaasa (16 seats)
11 Central-Finland (10 seats)
12 Oulu (18 seats)
13 Lapland (7 seats)

From time to time there's discussion on splitting the Uusimaa district into two, but it has been opposed on the grounds that having such a big district gives new and small parties a chance of success.

Electoral alliances are made on district-level, never nationally. Some notable alliances:

NCP + CD + SPP in Lapland
Finns + CD in Finland Proper
Pirates + Feminists + Liberals + Animal Justice Party in Helsinki

Most of the other alliances are between micro-parties. The parties involved in the Helsinki electoral alliance are micro-parties as well, of course, but that one does have a realistic chance, since the pirates and the feminists did both succeed in getting to the Helsinki council in the last municipal election.

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The Finns Party published an election video that has proved controversial. Or as Reuters writes:

The video depicts a monster, described by the video’s narrator as the incarnation of people’s anger, who kidnaps an unnamed corrupt leader to force him to repent his actions.

... The video was released by the anti-immigration party four days before Sunday’s attempted attack on foreign minister Timo Soini by a man wearing the logo of a right-wing, anti-immigration group at a campaign event near Helsinki.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-politics/finnish-nationalists-defend-campaign-video-after-man-threatens-foreign-minister-idUSKCN1R62ED

To be clear, there's no proof that the man who tried to attack Soini, punching his bodyguard, was in any way motivated by the video; the police say that the attack seemed to have been a spur-of-the-moment kind of incident.

Regardless, Finnkino (the country's largest cinema chain) announced that they would stop showing a shorter version of the ad. However, it later came out that the ad campaign the party had bought with Finnkino had already ended anyways.

The video, somewhat inspired by the film "V for Vendetta" (to which the title alludes) has already garnered 300,000 views. It get's kinda weird around the 4 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzCK4tTu2nE (English subtitles are available)

[Helsinkian]

There is a church in the film, that is the Catholic cathedral of Helsinki, refering to Timo Soini who is a famous Catholic in Finland.

You mean this? https://henrik.katolinen.fi/

The only similarity with the church at 2:03 is that both are red brick buildings. The entrance is totally different: St. Henry's has higher steps and two white statues at the sides of the door.

Edit: the church is definitely the German Church in Helsinki, a Lutheran parish (look at the entrance): https://www.deutschegemeinde.fi/fi/

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New YLE poll has Finns Party still surging (unlike in the HS poll). SDP's position as largest party appears to be secure. It would be interesting if no party were to reach 20%.

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Are there any studies that have (or are going to) show the general support for the parties among different demographics (like working class voters)?

I couldn't find anything recent. In a 2013 poll SDP and Finns Party were tied with working class voters at around 25%.

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Interesting...do you happen to have a link to that poll?

It was a poll for YLE, the national broadcaster. The information is from an article they published, and it has only some information, not the whole data: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-6477607

The first graph shows party support among working class voters (työntekijät) from 2011 to 2013, but only shows the figures for top three parties. The second graph shows party support among entrepreneurs (yrittäjät) in the same period (there the NCP was the largest party).

As you can see, right after the 2011 election (when their support was the highest) the Finns Party had a sizeable lead among workers, which then later came down (the article mentions that the divide was very much a gendered one, with working class men voting Finns Party and working class women voting SDP). I would expect the SDP to have a more clear lead among workers now that they are the largest party in general as well.

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Early voting started today and will continue until 9 April.

As always, the ballot paper is a very simple one (the candidate's number is written inside the circle):

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The Centre Party's Swedish-speaking organisation is telling their members to skip the election, arguing that the Centre Party under Sipilä has become a party of "neoliberal hard right-wing politics". There aren't that many Swedish-speakers in the Centre Party, but it's still pretty embarassing for them.