Finnish parliamentary election – 14 April 2019

[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):

[Helsinkian]

Poll by Tietoykkönen for the Alma Media group:

SDP 19.6%
NCP 17%
Centre 14.7%
Finns 13.4%
Green 13.3%
Left 9.1%
CD 4.1%
SPP 3.9%
Blue 2%
Others 2.9%

All parties under 20% would be a first.

Finns Party has recently fared better in the YLE polls compared to others; a new one should come out on thursday.

[Helsinkian]

Great to see PS surge. Told you so! Are there any Votematch-like tests?

Yes, and the YLE election compass is even available in English: https://vaalikone.yle.fi/eduskuntavaali2019/?lang=en

Climate issues have been talked about a lot in the media recently; you'll see that the very first questions are related to them. The third question is "The state should encourage people to eat less meat using measures such as taxation". The so-called "meat-tax" was at one point favoured by Antti Rinne, the SDP leader, but he had to back down when he noticed how unpopular it was.

How have Finnish media responded to the news of PS teaming up with AfD, Lega and DF?

It hasn't been talked about much, with the attention on the parliamentary election.

[Helsinkian]

The results of the "youth election", a shadow election where school students vote for the same candidates as in the real election, have been published:

Green League 17.1%
National Coalition Party 14.5%
Finns Party 14.5%
Centre Party 11.7%
Social Democratic Party 8.1%
Left Alliance 5.8%
Christian Democrats 4.1%
Blue Reform 3.5%
Swedish People's Party 3.3%
Seven Star Movement 2.7%
Pirate Party 2.7%
Communist Party 2.4%
Movement Now 2.2%
Animal Justice Party 1.1%

[Helsinkian]

I tend to get Suomen Kansa Ensin (Finnish People First) quite high on the results as well, but I disregard them because they're a small bunch of weirdos. They grew from anti-immigration street protests, but opposing the Finns Party is almost as important of a theme for them (the same was true of the various fringe-right micro parties that preceded them). Their main claim to fame is getting into altercations with left-wingers, police officers and other people and filming those interactions. Their leader is, interestingly, Dutch-Finnish, Marco de Wit.

[Helsinkian]

To be clear, the youth election was conducted mostly in secondary schools, with a few primary schools involved as well, so it doesn't include university level students. With university students, Left Alliance would probably be higher.

[Helsinkian]

I have a question. What kind of people and in which areas votes KD?

Socially conservative religious people, especially those in charismatic branches of Christianity like Pentecostalism and Laestadianism (though they face competition from Centre among the latter). Their chairwoman is Pentecostal. In 2015 their best municipality was Larsmo in the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia where they got 48% of the votes.

[Helsinkian]

New Kantar TNS poll for the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper was just released:

SDP 19.5%
NCP 17.5%
Finns Party 15%
Centre 14.4%
Green 12%
Left 9.6%
SPP 4.4%
CD 4.1%
Blue 1.1%
Others 2.4%

This means that there was a 4 percentage point jump in the Finns Party's support compared to the last HS poll.

[Helsinkian]

Early voting period ends with 36% having voted, which is up four percentage points from 2015.

[Helsinkian]

Taloustutkimus/YLE poll, the last poll before the election:

[Helsinkian]

Common explanations for the PS surge are:

1) Reaction to grooming cases involving foreign (Middle Eastern) men targeting Finnish girls; these started to be reported late last year, and there have been several indictments. Most widely reported cases have been in the city of Oulu. Much of the action seems to have been organized, and there are some similarities to the widely reported grooming cases in England (it brought Katie Hopkins to Finland to talk to the party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtgGVTFkQoE).

2) Climate change has been very much in the centre of political debates these last months, and the Finns Party may have benefited from the fact that their stance is very different from those of all other parties. They aren't outright climate change deniers, but they have denounced "climate alarmism".

3) People who voted for PS in 2015 and were then disappointed to their period in government are giving the party another chance now that there's new leadership.

[Helsinkian]

Is there any "consensus" among the pundits about what the government is going to look like? Guess KESK and PS are going to do a turn in opposition, so SDP, KOK, Vihr, RKP...? Do PS want to govern?

A coalition of SDP, NCP, Greens and SPP is a good bet, yes. But SDP might want to include Left Alliance, and then in that case NCP could want CD included too... That would be a repeat of the "sixpack coalition" of 2011 (Left Alliance and Greens ended up abandoning it later).

SDP voters would much prefer Centre over NCP as a partner, but if Centre loses 15 or 20 seats, I don't see them going into government.

Halla-aho says that PS wants to govern but not at any price. In practice, almost everyone is expecting PS to remain in opposition, even though Orpo somewhat softened his language on opposing PS cooperation this week (and Centre isn't absolutely opposed either).

[Helsinkian]

Here goes nothing:

Social Democratic Party 19.7%
National Coalition Party 17.1%
Finns Party 16.1%
Centre Party 13.8%
Green League 11.5%
Left Alliance 8.6%
Swedish People's Party 4.6%
Christian Democrats 3.8%
Blue Reform 1.2%
Others 3.6% (with Pirate Party at 1%)

[Helsinkian]

I voted for the Finns Party. I distributed some leaflets in the past two weeks as well; last time I had the energy for that was in 2011.

Polls close at 8 pm local time (which is 6 pm GMT). Finland doesn't do exit polls, but the results of (most) of the early voting is released at that time. Results will come here: https://vaalit.yle.fi/ev2019/en/parties

[Helsinkian]

A high turnout would benefit SDP, Finns Party and the Greens. A low turnout would benefit NCP and SPP.

Regarding the early vote, the usual caveats are that Centre always does better among early voters than in the overall vote, and with the Greens it's the reverse. The other parties are somewhere in between. Finns Party did better among election day voters in 2015.

[Helsinkian]

Advanced voting 2015 / Final results 2015

PS 15.8 / 17.2

17.7 was the final tally for PS, actually, so they went up two points when the election day votes came in. However, in other elections the difference has been smaller for them, so we'll see...

[Helsinkian]

Here's the main election ad of SDP (English subtitles available): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lN9Wsrrbho

There have been several parodies, here's one with triple the views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtOYHTRSMes

[Helsinkian]

The YLE projection is expected circa 1h30 min to 2h after the polls close.

[Helsinkian]

The election broadcast of YLE 1 starts in a few minutes. Usually YLE Areena (YLE's streaming service) is geoblocked outside the country, but now it seems to be available (I use a VPN but can see it): https://areena.yle.fi/tv/suorat

[Helsinkian]

Up to 25% of early votes have not been counted, with most of the votes not counted in Southern Finland. This should mean that Centre is even higher in the early vote batch that will be soon released.

[Helsinkian]

With 37% counted:

SDP 18.9
KOK 17.2
KESK 15.4
PS 15.1
VIHR 11.4
VAS 8.9
KD 4.3
SFP 4.0
SIN 1.0

KESK will definitely finish fourth.

[Helsinkian]

With 37% counted:

So this includes some of the e-day vote but excludes that 25% of the early vote that was not counted?

I don't think there's anything from today yet. When the election day votes do come, they will first come from small municipalities. So expect Centre to rise first before starting a steep decline later in the evening.

[Helsinkian]

Left Alliance is currently up 6 seats. That would be a very impressive result for them, seeing that they've gone down in every parliamentary election in the 2000s.

[Helsinkian]

With 37% counted:

So this includes some of the e-day vote but excludes that 25% of the early vote that was not counted?

I don't think there's anything from today yet. When the election day votes do come, they will first come from small municipalities. So expect Centre to rise first before starting a steep decline later in the evening.

So with current results is SDP or KOK more likely to lead the government?

SDP's lead will probably hold. The largest party will be given the task to form a government first; if one party has more votes but the other has more seats, I think the task would be given to the one with more seats.

[Helsinkian]

The 2 others who would be elected based on early vote are Mats Löfström from Åland islands who will sit with SPP and Harry Harkimo from Liike Nyt.

Liike Nyt is Movement Now in English, in case someone's wondering (see my introduction).