Finland – Municipal elections

Finland held municipal elections last weekend.

The Ministry of Justice reports that turnout was 58.3% and gives the following results (with the net change in % vote and seats from 2008 in brackets):

  • National Coalition Party, 21.9% (-1.6, -286 seats)
  • Social Democratic Party, 19.6% (-1.4, -337 seats)
  • Centre Party, 18.7% (-1.7, -440 seats)
  • True Finns, 12.3% (+7.0, +752 seats)
  • Green League, 8.5% (-0.8, -47 seats)
  • Left Alliance, 8.0% (-0.4, -193 seats)
  • Swedish People’s Party, 4.7% (0, -30 seats)
  • Christian Democrats, 3.7% (-0.4, -51 seats)

So, there was only one winner, the opposition True Finns. The current government is a wide-ranging coalition that replaced the Centre Party-led coalition in 2011. The latter was relieved not to have gone down further in the polls. However, all the ‘establishment’ parties were punished at the expense of the True Finns.

That said, there is some evidence of a centre-rural divide. The True Finns seemed to do better in rural areas. For example, in Helsinki the True Finns ‘only’ increased by 4.1%. Here, the Left Alliance also went up by +1.7%. That said, the decline in the other parties’ votes pretty much matched the decline in the country as a whole.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *