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Finland votes: Social Democrats take the win as Finns Party (far-right) support collapses

yle.fi

SDP takes the win as Finns Party vote collapses

Finland headed to the polls on Sunday to elect thousands of councillors in a range of local and regional bodies.

The Social Democrats took a big win in the municipal elections, taking nearly one in four votes nationwide to push the National Coalition Party of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo into second place.

In the county council elections, for 21 regional bodies that arrange social and healthcare outside Helsinki, the SDP also topped the poll. The Centre Party recorded a good result in its rural heartlands to secure third spot.

Government parties did poorly, with all but the NCP losing support compared to the previous municipal elections in 2021. Turnout in the municipal election was 54.2 percent, while the county elections saw 51.7 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots.

The dual vote for municipal and county councils caused logistical issues for election officials, with counting slower than usual for Finland, where large numbers vote in advance and results are usually clear within a couple of hours of polls closing.

The Finns Party saw support collapse compared to the last municipal election, with the party nearly halving its vote from four years ago. They lost support in several towns that are seeing hospital services cut back as part of the central government's savings drive.

49 comments

  • My impression as an outsider (some, but limited, exposure to Finnish politics) is that the Finns have the right way of dealing with these far right, maybe. What they always do it seems like is to create a coalition government of the largest parties, including the far right. This keeps them from riding the underdog wave of support for years, and exposes their incompetence in real political issues (usually these parties only have one well-formulated stance, and that is anti immigration - that's the solution to every single other issue).

    I'm welcome to criticism if my outsider perspective is misinformed. (-:

    • As a German, I can assure you that this strategy only works in Finland. Forming a coalition with Nazis brought Germany the Nazi dictatorship and World War II.

    • Here in the Netherlands the far right party became the biggest after the second largest party tried to win votes by saying they think their voters are right (it didn't, some of their voters moved to the far right party after they validated their points in the open). They are now part of a coalition and for the first time I hear public criticism of their own voters, because exactly as you point out their incompetence is showing. They made promises they can't keep for example. It's better they are not the outsider / underdog that can harness the people's dislike of the government.

    • In Germany there's a word for the strategy you're proposing: in der Regierung "entzaubern" - "demystifying" them in government.

      As someone has said, the Nazis were lifted into a coalition government which was the last step before their takeover of the country. I agree that this was bad, but it's a bit simple to compare this to the current situation.

      A better comparison is Austria. Austria did exactly what you proposed - the establishment conservatives went into coalition with the extremist right, and after one election, they were able to ditch them. Cool. But the effect of this was permanently legitimizing the right. In the last election the FPÖ, a party founded by actual old nazis, won a plurality of votes. It took a grand coalition of three parties to keep them out of government.

      What else is there to do? In Germany and Austria, the right is much more extreme than in Finland. Germany is also a lynchpin in european politics, which the right wants to destroy. In Finland, even the right is anti-russia. In Germany, it's the conservatives who traditionally dominate. When they compete with the extremist right, they're not on the other side of the political spectrum, just a little to the center. In Finland, when the social democrats point out the mistakes of the right, they're more believable and persuasive, because they're actually markedly different from the party they're criticizing.

      There is another way to combat the right. When the center holds, and is able to agree on certain principles, they can "quarantine" the right. If they don't, they'll be unable to compete with other democratic parties, and have to compete only with the right. If they do quarantine, they can ignore the right, while focusing on their actual bread-and-butter issues while avoiding being pulled into a bullshit spiral. This is the current strategy of the german democratic parties (CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, Linke). It remains to be seen if the strategy will survive the next four years. If it doesn't, I prophesy dark trouble for germany.

    • The far-right is a completely dead-on-arrival set of ideologies based in hatred, either for “others” or simply just not considering other people human beings and caring more about ones wallet and personal comfort than someone else’s well-being. They can go fuck themselves and do not deserve to be legitimized, and if that builds enough support to be a sizeable force then whatever country it is is filled with morons and, frankly, deserves whatever they get.

      All governments are “coalitions” when no single party has a simple majority and frankly if you run a government and don’t even communicate with the other parties you should be run out office follwed by being run through a large, pointy object. Anyway, the idea of “including all the represetatives in a coalition” should be THE FUCKING BASELINE.

      Here in Canada, the Conservatives time and again show how wildly incompetent and unwilling to behave and collaborate they are yet they still catch big numbers while having little to no policy except crying like babies every time the CBC is mean to them reports on them accurately. The left-wing and center parties made a coalition a few years back and the Conservatives called it cheating. They also talk about being “the official opposition” a lot but never really seem to worry about cooperation. Part of me wants to see them get a minority government and have to beg for votes from the very people they spewed hate towards for so long.

49 comments