Finnish parliamentary election – 14 April 2019

[Ethelberth]

Commumidt workers" party has traditionally been pro DPRK., very orthodox commies.

[Ethelberth]

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.

Many of them are close to 70 years, so probably leaving parliament anyway.

[Ethelberth]

The reasons for Lapland being centre right are several.

1. The southern and western parts of constituency are religious (full of Laestadians) regions with strong non-socialist convictions. The Finnish party and especially Agrarian League have had loads of politicians from this background. Centre party has strong machine since war in order to fight against communism.

2. Strong emigration.  The children of small holds that were created after war moved en masse to Sweden in sixties and seventies. Many families had been refugees in Sweden after war, and there has been tradition to move to industrial hubs of Sweden.

3 Urho Kekkonen and regional politics

The infrastructure and urban systems (like universities) developed middle class people to big cities that were loyal to party that created their jobs.

4. Economic system

Despite of Kemi the Lapland has had strong logging traditions and also touristic tradtions. Since the people still own much of the land themselves, the area is naturally centre right.

5. Opposition to the big cities.

The area has had populist politicians (eg. Paavo Väyrynen) that have strong idea to oppose "the South" that  mean KOK and SDP.

[Ethelberth]

KD has been also party for those Civil-war red families who have not been able to vote socialists (due their secularism) but unable to vote traditional White parties (Centre and Kok). Obviously, these people have been part of Pentecostal Church too, since Church in general used to bee white, before sixties. Nowadays such distinction does not exist very strongly, especially among Laestadians who live in Southern Finland. It's more like Catholics voting SGP.

[Ethelberth]

Yes. The big element of them has been "christian intellectuals" who were influenced by Norwegian KrFP,  They were part of Lutheran church and used to vote KoK before moral revolution in sixties.  The importance of Pentecostals was that they have quite wide presence all over Finland, meaning you can get local activists anywhere in Finland.

[Ethelberth]

The former SDP voters used to be element in Soini PS have gone back (at least to some extent).

[Ethelberth]

This is looking like an absolutely awful result for the SDP even if they top the poll, pretty comparable to the "win" of Swedish S in 2014. Their second-worst result ever. If their highs look like this, I don't think they want to know what their lows may look like.

The SDP is very much a party of smaller towns; always was. Given longterm population movements this is a little bit problematic and means that the party has undergone a pretty substantial structural retrenchment in the scope and scale of its support. This is actually a bigger problem than the fact that its electorate is older than average; that, in itself, is not automatically a problem.

0.70 true. SDP has had strong support in small industrial towns, that have suffered lot population loss and also change to PS.  The classical example is Imatra, which used to have over 40 000 inhabitants in eighties but is now smaller than one MP area (about 25000 inhabitants).
Same thing has happened in lot of their old non metrpolitan strongholds. However, some metropolitan regions, espcialley Tampere, Vantaa and Turku, provide still left-wing majorities and especilly classical lower middle class suburbs still give them good chunk of their support, especially in local elections. Its obvious that they have had difficulties with this electorate in three last legistative elections.

[Ethelberth]

SMP used to be in right side of the plenary 1975-1983, before they were taken to Coalition between SDP-KESK and SFP 1983. Before that they used to sit in centre 1970-1975.

[Ethelberth]

Were sid they sat when they were members of the KOK-SDP government  (Holkeri).

Between Centre and Greeens.

[Ethelberth]

Would you rather see the Centre Party or the NCP in government?

It might be good for the NCP to be in opposition for a change; maybe that would bring them closer to the Finns Party.

Aren't the NCP like the most socially liberal and culturally progressive (along with being the most-pro immigration) of the major Finnish parties though?

They are now, but there are still some conservatives left who might want to reorientate the party toward what it used to be. That would first require a change of leadership, though.

You mean, what it used to be in fifties. Have you lived in fifties.

[Ethelberth]

The social conservatives of NCP left the party largely in early 1970ies (to KD). SMP was also rather socially conservative, but actually developement aid friendly (because that was a possibility to critisize SDP-KESK governments.  In eighties there were some cultural wars, but NCP did not have any role in them (unlike sixties). NCP was interested in modernizing Finnish economy, not on social issues.

[Ethelberth]

I think Palestine is more important to Left wing alliance. Defence minister is the most bourgiouse  postion in Finland. Last time it was governed by left was in  early seventies (SDP minority government).