Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,
Here's a report of Sunday's parliamentary election in Finland, kindly provided by Professor Tapio Raunio of the University of Tampere.
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The Finnish parliamentary election of 18 March produced a major victory for the centre-right parties, with particularly the conservative National Coalition achieving a very good result. The populist True Finns more than doubled their vote share from the 2003 elections.
The leading government party, the Centre, maintained its position as the largest party, with 51 seats and 23.1% of the vote. This means that the government formation negotiations will be led by the Centre and the highly popular Matti Vanhanen will most probably continue as prime minister in the new cabinet. The National Coalition gained 3.7% and ten seats, taking it to 50 seats and 22.3% of the votes. This positive result is at least partly explained by the presence of former party chair and presidential candidate Sauli Niinistö in the campaign. Niinistö won a staggering 60,498 votes in the Uusimaa electoral district (13% of those cast in the constituency), the all-time high won by an individual candidate in Finland. Also, the current party chair, Jyrki Katainen, emerged as a confident leader whose youthful and fresh image gave a healthy boost to the campaign.
The third large party, the Social Democrats, fared very poorly, winning only 21.4% of the vote and 45 seats. While SDP probably suffered from the low turnout, party leader Eero Heinäluoma never managed to convince the electorate – or even his own party voters – of his leadership abilities.
Moving to the smaller parties, the Left Alliance saw its vote share decline, ending up with 8.8% and 17 MPs. The Greens won 8.5% and 15 seats, but significantly their party leader, Tarja Cronberg, failed to renew her seat and hence the party may elect a new leader later this spring. The Christian Democrats (4.9%, 7 MPs) and the Swedish People’s Party (4.5%, 10 MPs including the representative from the Åland Islands) by and large held on to their seat and vote shares. True Finns, on the other hand, won 4.0% and 5 MPs, an increase of 2.4% from the 2003 elections. The party chair, Timo Soini, has an outgoing personality and excellent debating skills that clearly benefited the True Finns’ campaign.
The likeliest coalition alternative is a centre-right cabinet formed by the Centre, the National Coalition and the Swedish People’s Party. Should this become reality, Finnish parliamentary politics might become a bit livelier and more interesting than before, as the opposition would also be ideologically more cohesive than has been the case since the 1995 elections. However, the bad news for Finnish democracy was the turnout of 67.8% (65% including Finns residing abroad) – the lowest since the Second World War. Considering that the Eduskunta is currently celebrating its centenary, the steadily declining turnout (with the exception of the 2003 elections) casts a long shadow over these celebrations. But at least the women candidates proved successful: the new Eduskunta has 84 female MPs (42%), the highest share recorded in the history of the Finnish parliament.
(Please note that the vote and seat shares reported here are not based on final results confirmed by the state authorities.)
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Best,
Nick Aylott.
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Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University College
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap
