Finnish municipal elections 2012

[MaxQue]

Basic Finns?
What are those?

[mubar]

Basic Finns?
What are those?

It's the party commonly known as True Finns, whose official name is Perussuomalaiset in Finnish and Sannfinländerna in Swedish. The "perus-" part of the Finnish language name means many things, like "basic", "elementary", "ordinary" or even "fundamental". But not "true". On the other hand, the "sann-" part of the Swedish language name means "true", indeed. I know that the form True Finns, a translation of the Swedish name, is the one most often used in English, but considering that the party themselves is known as nationalistic and prefers to use only Finnish language wherever possible, it feels very odd to use that form. But it's also true that almost no one calls them "Basic Finns" in English... Maybe I should forget the translation problems and just stick to "Perussuomalaiset".

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

voted

Which party and which municipality?

[Lasitten]

Now I have done my campaing, distriputed 1 000 flyers and toured around the city for almost two weeks. I gues that Left Alliance could have + 1 councilor in Joensuu. And nationwide maybe 8,5-9 % of the votes. Now I can only sitdown and drink beer.

If you want to follow the elections Yle has livetv . Results can also seen from HS.fi, from official vaalit.fi and from Yle news.

[mubar]

So the elections were held on Sunday, and pretty much as expected, the three major parties Kokoomus, SDP and Keskusta each lost some support and Perussuomalaiset won big, when compared to the previous municipal elections. In fact, PS managed to increase their share of votes in 292 of the 304 municipalities, and in most of those they got at least one councillor. The more important story of these elections is however, that the populist victory was much smaller than expected: they finished overall a full 3 percentage points lower than all the polls had predicted, and even 7 points lower than in last year's parliamentary election. Compared to last year, PS is the main loser of these elections, while almost all the other parties advanced.

Combined nationwide result:

KOK         21,9 %
SDP         19,6 %
KESK       18,7 %
PS           12,3 %
VIHR          8,5 %
VAS           8,0 %
SFP (RKP)  4,7 %
KD             3,7 %
Others      2,6 %

Keskusta did better than expected, holding its power in most rural areas. It's still the largest party in 208 of the 304 municipalities and will have over 3000 councillors, with majority in many small places. Kokoomus and SDP will have about 1700 councillors each. Kokoomus also did somewhat better than expected, staying the largest overall and also in most large cities. They had to endure some losses in many of their strongholds, though, and these were only partly compensated by increase in support from some rural areas in South Finland. SDP did ok, and had encouraging results from some larger cities, but they obviously lost a lot more than average in some traditionally social democratic working-class areas and cities with declining industry.

PS did not become one of the big municipal parties after all. They still got over 1000 councillors, and will obviously now become part of the municipal politics almost everywhere. But they are there biggest party in only two small rural communes, which is very weak when compared to those maps of the 2011 election.

The Greens did quite well, keeping most of their 300 councillors, and even though they had to endure some losses in their strongholds, the predicted collapse in Helsinki did not materialize. In addition, many rural places got their first green councillors. The Left Alliance went down somewhat, losing support in their traditionally strongest areas in the North. At the same time, they did win in several cities, most importantly in Helsinki, and they still have over 600 councillors overall. The Swedish People's Party could activate their base very well to keep their almost 500 councillors, and held or even increased their position in the West and South coasts of Finland, while losing a bit in the Turku area. The Christian Democrats generally lost somewhat, still managing about 300 councillors, while the other minor parties and groups as well as independents failed to make a major breakthrough anywhere. Put together, the minor non-parliamentary parties (mainly the Finnish Communist Party) and independents will now have about 200 municipal councillors.

Major theme in the Finnish media right now is the low turnout. Only 58,2 % voted, and this is a decrease of 3 percentage points from 2008, which many commentators call catastrophic etc. However, the turnout now was about the same as in 2004 and significantly higher than in 2000 (which was, admittedly, a historically low point), so I don't see any real reason to be alarmed.

Overall I would say these elections can be seen as a mildly positive sign to the current Finnish government coalition. If you calculated the results according to the parliamentary constituencies and elected the parliament based on these votes (ignoring the electoral alliances that can be formed between parties on constituency level), both KOK and KESK would win 5 seats and SDP 4 seats compared to 2011, while PS would lose the same 14 seats, so the government would be significantly stronger. At the same time, of course, many small municipalities experienced major local political changes.

[mubar]

The main problem of the election was the fact that the Kok won on the platfrom punishing small municipalities and country side, but in their own strongholds in suburbs of big cities (that were originally targeted in the municipal reform) their candidates were against the municipal mergers of their own rich municipalities.

True, the Kok sort of play two roles, one on national level and the other one on local level in the suburbs. But, I don't see anything particularly wrong with this: it's natural for the national politicians to consider the overall situation and perhaps be a bit less sympathetic to those areas where their party has limited support, while the local politicians will think about their own municipality first and foremost. It's very much possible that some voters think strategically and vote for such local Kokoomus candidates to strengthen the "anti-municipal reform" opposition inside the national party. Because really, all Finnish parties except Keskusta are sort of situational when talking about municipalities: generally larger units are seen as better and more effective, except of course the own hometown should stay independent at all costs... And even Keskusta went against their principles a few years ago, when three of their ministers, the then-PM Vanhanen included, voted for the forced joining of parts of Sipoo to Helsinki in 2007 (although Pekkarinen and Väyrynen held true to the principle of municipal autonomy and voted against).

It seems that the rhetoric about local government has changed during the past few decades. Back in 1960s and 1970s, during the first municipal reform, several forced mergers were done, usually targetting suburbs. The reason was to give room for cities to grow without administrative borders stopping them. But after that, the municipal autonomy has become more important - at least in political speeches - and nowadays the mergers are almost always based on economic reasons. So it makes sense that a rich suburb has a lot of politicians opposing a merger with a neighboring big city that is struggling with economic hardships.

In other news, if I understand correctly, Lasitten did not get elected as councillor in Joensuu but still became one of the deputy councillors there. So I wish a lot of luck and success for the work in municipal committees during the next 4 years!

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Forced joining of parts of Sipoo to Helsinki in 2007.

Sågarna brummar och trädena strittar, sibboborna packar o flyttar.
Staden tar helan, staden tar halvan, tersen o kvarten o kvinten på!
Tar sig mot öster, trots alla protester.
Här kommer höghus, här kommer Stockmann, metron o spåran o spurgun på!

[mubar]

I am personally a Centre supporter who stems from Helsinki region, so for me the dual role of KOK is the primary obstacle to achieve a decent municipal  and local government reform that would affect the suburbs as well.

Cannot argue with that, it sure is one of the major obstacles to a meaningful reform.

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True that. There were some non-voluntary municipal mergers of tiny municipalities to their larger neighbours back then, even though most mergers of that type were done with common agreement. But the more numerous and in any case the most contentious forced mergers were those were cities small in area got large through eating their neighbors. Especially Lappeenranta and the last forced merger, Kotka, are quite (in)famous. After that, the rhetoric has become increasingly supporting of municipal autonomy and all reforms being based on free will, various incentives from the state and economic benefits. So when the main points in dicussion about local government are municipal self-government on one hand and promises of becoming richer through joining together on the other hand, it's easy to understand why people in a rich suburb would fiercely oppose joining forces with a central city that they consider less wealthy.