After an exciting election night Without a clear winner, Finland has turned to the right after four years of left-wing rule. Completed the scrutiny, the conservatives, with the 20.8% and 48 seats, they won the legislative elections held this Sunday, closely followed by the populist right (20.1% and 46 seats). Both parties improved their 2019 results by 3.8 and 2.6 points, respectively.
In third position and by only one tenth, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of the Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, who improves by more than two points the results of the last elections. However, the 19.9% and the 43 seats obtained are not enough to reissue the current centre-left coalition.
In the opinion of the leader of the conservative National Coalition Party and future prime minister, Petteri Orpo“the Finnish people want a change and now I will open negotiations with all the parties to form a government”,
Meanwhile, Marin did not wait for the count to conclude to congratulate Orpo. “My party has gained support and we have more representatives in Parliament, so as party leader I am very happy,” she said as she offered to negotiate a coalition to prevent the extreme right from entering the government.
The truth is that it seems that the call for the useful vote of the prime minister to prevent the ultra-right from coming to power has been successful, but as a whole the Finnish left has gone from 56% to 52% of the vote. The SDP is the only one of the five parties in the current government coalition that is not punished at the polls. The centrists fell to 11.3% (the worst result in their history), the Left Alliance to 7.1%, the Greens to 7% and the Swedish People’s Party to 4.3%. As a whole the current coalition loses 20 seats in the “Eduskunta” (Parliament).
For Marin, these were the first elections in which she had run as the SDP candidate, as she succeeded Antti Rinne as prime minister in 2019, after the former union leader resigned over a postal strike.
At 39, Marin is more popular than his party thanks to his successful management of the coronavirus and the historic accession to NATO after decades of military non-alignment. According to a poll by the newspaper “Helsingin Sanomat”, 64% believe they have done a “very good job” or a “pretty good job” at the head of the Government. However, the deterioration of the economy and public finances have had a greater influence on the electorate.
In the opinion of Göran Djupsund, professor emeritus at the Turku Academy, “Marin will probably stay as party leader.” “Without it,” he says, “the Social Democrats probably would have lost the election, now they have advanced, which is unusual for a ruling party.”
plethoric was shown Riikka Purrathe leader of the ultra Finns Party, which achieves the best electoral result in its history. “The tightening of immigration policy is a clear threshold issue. We also want to see changes in economic policy and climate policy,” he summarized as priorities to enter the Government, reports the newspaper “Iltalehti.”
The Finnish far right wants restrict the arrival of immigrants to avoid the wave of violence from gangs and segregated neighborhoods like in neighboring Sweden. “Now we are making exactly the same mistakes in immigration policy that Sweden has been making for several years,” he said during the Purra campaign. The truth is in Finland, only 10% of its population was born abroad, compared to 20% in Sweden.
Given that conservatives, social democrats and ultra-rightists barely reach 20% of the votes each, the possible alternatives would be a coalition between conservatives and social democrats, or, one between conservatives and ultra-rightists. However, hardly any of them would have an absolute majority in Parliament (101 deputies) on their own. Conservatives and populists are likely to try to form a government with the centrists, whose leader already warned during the campaign that she would not renew an alliance with the Social Democrats.
Orpo focused his campaign on criticizing the government’s management of public accounts, with a debt that since 2019 has risen from 65% to 73% of GDP. It promises to reduce spending by 6,000 million euros over the next four years.
The conservative leader does not rule out a coalition with the populist right. In fact, after the 2015 elections, an unprecedented right-wing tripartite was formed between the National Coalition Party, the Center Party and The True Finns, who left the Government in 2017 after an internal split.
Marin, on the other hand, ruled out any collaboration with a party he considers racist. «You have to decide if you want a Finland that withdraws inwards and closes itself or an open, strong Finland with international projection. One that cuts social assistance to the poorest or one that takes care of the subsistence of each person, “he said during a television debate.
The elections have condemned Marin to suffer the same fate as the former Swedish prime minister and Social Democratic leader, Magdalena Andersson. Like her, her party loses power despite substantially improving her electoral results. Of course, in the Swedish case the SAP maintains its hegemony as the party with the most votes. Neither Marin nor Andersson have been able to capitalize on their popularity, greater than that of their respective political formations.