Finnish parliamentary election – 14 April 2019

[Helsinkian]

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

[Helsinkian]

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.

[MAINEiac4434]

The way the polls are going, it seems every Nordic country except for Norway will have a center-left prime minister.

[Helsinkian]

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.

[Helsinkian]

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%

[Helsinkian]

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.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The way the polls are going, it seems every Nordic country except for Norway will have a center-left prime minister.

The Norway government has entered a bit of a slump recently: Progress have collapsed to about ten percent, the Conservatives have lost their lead over Labour and both Venstre and KD are polling below the threshold.

[parochial boy]

Why does Finnish Lapland not seem to vote for the left in thew way that the Swedish and Norwegian far-north do? Presumably lack of a historical resource extraction industry?

[FredLindq]

Keskusta (the Centreparty and old agrarian party) is very strong in Lappland. My guess is that the industry in norhtern Finland is more rural and less mines and heavy industry as in Sweden.

[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.

[Helsinkian]

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/

[Helsinkian]

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%.

[Beezer]

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

[Helsinkian]

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%.

[Beezer]

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

[Helsinkian]

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.

[Helsinkian]

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):

[Helsinkian]

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.

[DavidB.]

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.

Sounds like the type of trick you can pull off exactly once and then lose all your credibility afterwards.

[Beezer]

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

...

Thanks. Of course confirms the general trend across Europe regarding right-wing populists and their inroads into the center-left's traditional electorate...

[Helsinkian]

A couple of very interesting regional polls from the two northernmost electoral districts have the Finns Party (PS) actually improving from their 2015 result, while the Centre Party plunges in its core support areas (percentage changes are compared to 2015).

Lapland district (poll for the newspaper Lapin Kansa):



Oulu district (poll for the newspaper Kaleva):

[Former President tack50]

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.

Why not endorse the Swedish People's Party at that point? Or outright secede and merge with them?

[Donerail]

Potentially of interest to folks here: Finnish national broadcaster Yle News has an English-language podcast called "All Points North," which has done an impressively in-depth political party profile series.

[Lord Halifax]

Potentially of interest to folks here: Finnish national broadcaster Yle News has an English-language podcast called "All Points North," which has done an impressively in-depth political party profile series.

Do you got a link?