Finnish parliamentary election – 14 April 2019

[Double Carpet]

Thanks!!

[Helsinkian]

Blue Reform is still bitter at Halla-aho. A comment from an aide to one of their outgoing ministers: "Better to die honourably than to be gelded under Halla-aho."

[rc18]

So less than a fifth of the SIN vote between SDP and PS...

[Helsinkian]

Uusimaa's last seat will be very close; PS might still rise to 40 seats. (Edit: probably not.)

Another very close seat is Lapland's last seat (Centre ahead of Greens by only a few votes); that might change in the confirmatory count early next week.

[Helsinkian]

Greens largest party in Helsinki for the first time.

[Helsinkian]

First black MP First black female MP elected; Bella Forsgrén, Green, Central-Finland.

[Aboa]

First black MP elected; Bella Forsgrén, Green, Central-Finland.

I think that Jani Toivola would regard himself as black, despite having white mother.

[Helsinkian]

First black MP elected; Bella Forsgrén, Green, Central-Finland.

I think that Jani Toivola would regard himself as black, despite having white mother.

Ah, true, I forgot about him. First black woman then.

[Helsinkian]

The Green parliamentary group's gender divide: 17 women, 3 men. Lapland might still give them one more woman in the final count.

[Helsinkian]

This seems to be the final result of this count. Some votes still out there in Uusimaa, but unlikely to change seats. All counted now. The last seat in Lapland is currently with Centre but Greens are so closely behind that that may change in the confirmatory count early next week.

Social Democratic Party 40 seats (+6)
Finns Party 39 (+1)
National Coalition Party 38 (+1)
Centre Party 31 (-18)
Green League 20 (+5)
Left Alliance 16 (+4)
Swedish People's Party 9 (no change)
Christian Democrats 5 (no change)
Movement Now 1 (new)
Åland 1 (no change)

[jaichind]

If you add Blue Reform vote share to Finns party and NYT vote share to NCP then this election was pretty much Centre party losing a bit of support to everyone else which really adds up.

[Helsinkian]

Mikko Kärnä, Centre Party MP for Lapland, has for some reason made Catalonian independence the theme for which he is most well known. He even brings this up in his first tweet after being elected:

https://twitter.com/KarnaMikko/status/1117541692280856576

[Helsinkian]

Halla-aho got more personal votes than all Blue Reform (SIN) candidates put together.

[rob in cal]

  Assuming that the Finns Party can be considered a national populist type party, I believe this is the closest such a party has ever come to finishing in first place in a national election in Europe.

[bigic]

Actually right-wing populists won national parliamentary elections in Hungary and Poland, if you only count the EU - maybe there are more examples I'm not aware of. Forum for Democracy did win in the Netherlands - but in the provincial (regional) election, although provincial parliaments do choose the Senate.

[mgop]

worst result for centre party since 1917. (when finland was still part of russia)

[Sestak]

So Finns-NCP-Centre have a majority, meaning at least one of them will have to be in the government. Which is considered most likely to join an SDP-led government? I assume they won’t go with each other...

[JonHawk]

Wow @ PS at 17% when they were only polling 8% a few months back. Great news

[Hydera]

So Finns-NCP-Centre have a majority, meaning at least one of them will have to be in the government. Which is considered most likely to join an SDP-led government? I assume they won’t go with each other...

I heard NCP is a possible partner for a SDP+Greens+SPP government but NCP and Centre both are economically right leaning so including NCP would be ehhh...

[Donerail]

So Finns-NCP-Centre have a majority, meaning at least one of them will have to be in the government. Which is considered most likely to join an SDP-led government? I assume they won’t go with each other...

conventional wisdom is that KESK's disastrous time in government means they'll want a turn in the opposition-- of the remaining options, KOK is probably more palatable than PS.

[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.

[DavidB.]

I liked this visualization.

[Tender Branson]

I think David, you had the best prediction overall, followed by mine.

I'm still happy after correctly predicting Ukraine I, Slovakia, Israel and now Finland.

[jaichind]

I assume government formation will be SDP-NCP-SFP plus either  Left Alliance or Greens ?  Not sure how the economic policy will work in such a government.  I have to assume Centre will go into opposition given its losses so the only alternative is to have Finns in the government. 

[Helsinkian]

Left Alliance's party rules stipulate that going into government has to be approved by the membership in a letter vote, so that's another factor.