Finnish parliamentary election – April 19th 2015

[mubar]

So everyone wants to play with the Centre Party, but the Centre Party's voters are only dead keen on the Social Democrats. Some of the other patterns are interesting as well.

Not voters, local councillors.

Last week, this question was asked also on voters in a TNS Gallup poll ordered by The Foundation for Municipal Development: http://yle.fi/uutiset/poll_finland_wants_a_red_earth_government/7868686

Main finding is that there is an overall majority support for both Centre party and SDP being in the next government. The percentage of voters who want each party to be part of the government:

Centre Party 60%
Social Democrats 51%
National Coalition Party 34%
Finns Party 30%
Green League 27%
Left Alliance 24%
Swedish People's Party 19%
Christian Democrats 13%

(Don't know / can't say 18%)

So this would mean a general approval for a traditional Social Democrats - Centre Party coalition ('red earth'). The 2 can't alone form a majority government, so they'd still need to pick partners from the less popular parties.

There's an article on the poll here (in Finnish): http://www.kaks.fi/node/7755 with details in pdf. It shows that the parties' voters have similar views as the local politicians.

• Centre and SDP voters want to see each other's party in the government, which is a strong signal for a 'red earth' coalition basis forming. Besides, SDP voters also would like to have Left Alliance and maybe the Greens in, while Centre voters are just somewhat ok with Finns Party joining. Centre preferences would result to a centrist-populist Centre-SDP-Finns coalition, for SDP supporters a left-wing Centre-SDP-Left-Greens(-Swedish Party) coalition would be fine.
  
• National Coalition Party voters would really love to rule together with Centre, and they'd include Swedish People's Party as the minor partner. However National Coalition isn't much liked among Centre voters, and even less within other major parties. Their preferred right-wing coalition Centre-NCP-Swedish Party (and eventually the Christian Democrats too) also isn't likely to get majority.
• For the Finns Party voters only Centre seems acceptable, with little interest for seeing any other parties in government. Conversely, of the others only Centre voters have some acceptance for having the Finns in. Due to such large disagreement between Finns and all other parties, a coalition including them would definitely be uneasy from the start.
  
• Both Left Alliance and Green League voters really want to have SDP in the government, Greens and Left also like each other. As neither party's voters also don't have particularly negative view on Centre, their preference is similar to SDP voters. However both parties now have certain reservations regarding government, as they both left the 'six-pack' gov't for opposition just last year. 

Obviously we can't predict what the end result will look like, due to the consensus nature of Finnish politics, so that in the end almost everyone is willing to play with almost everyone. After all, almost no NCP voter wants to govern with Left Alliance and the feeling certainly is mutual, yet these two parties have been together in the government for 11 of the last 20 years.

[mubar]

There's new a seat prediction from the National Broadcasting Company.

And here is their full prediction by electoral district:



The prediction omits electoral alliances, in particular there is one between NCP (KOK) and Swedish People's Party in Varsinais-Suomi (Finland Proper), which will practically guarantee the Swedish Party's seat there, at the cost of some other party. Also, the Greens in Uusimaa are expected to win a seat, and not lose one as the changes column for them mistakenly shows.

In general this is believable stuff. We can expect to see a heavy Centre win, with healthy increases for both Left Alliance and Greens, while SDP, National Coalition Party and Finns would see significant losses and the Christians head for obscurity, with Swedes stable.

The biggest shifts (multiple seat changes in the same district) are attributed to popular politicians; in Uusimaa NCP doesn't have ex-PM Katainen in these elections, as he's now in Brussels, while ex-PM Vanhanen tries to return to parliament in Centre list; in Oulu, Centre's party leader Sipilä is a candidate and expected to collect the largest individual vote.

[mubar]

Advance voting started today.

After first day of advance voting, already 4,6% of Finnish citizens living in Finland have voted. When including those who voted today in Finnish embassies and consulates abroad, it means that over 200 000 votes have already been given. You can follow the daily progress during the whole advance voting period (8.4. - 14.4.) in Ministry of Justice site.

According to Yle, this year the first day of advance voting was more active than in previous elections. They'll be tracking the turnout daily, here's the first (in Finnish). Yle also has a short piece on advance voting in English.

[mubar]

Last opinion poll before election day, by Taloustutkimus/YLE:

Centre Party 24.0%
National Coalition Party 16.9%
Finns Party 16.7%
Social Democrats 15.1%
Green League 8.8%
Left Alliance 8.3%
Swedish People's Party 4.6%
Christian Democrats 3.5%
Others 2.0%

Any particular reason for the drop in SD support? Or is it just a sampling issue you think?

It's worth noting that this Yle poll has been conducted over the last 3 weeks from late March (Yle News article), so it's essentially representing changes in support a few weeks ago. In comparison, the HS poll published on Tuesday was conducted over the 5 advance voting days, so it's much more recent. And the HS poll didn't register any drop for SDP. The main common theme that both of these polls show, was KESK dropping and PS rising.

Yle claims that the social democrats had lost some working class and women as supporters in their latest poll. But it's hard to say why they would have lost among these demographics in March. One possible explanation could be that as the holder of Ministry of Finance, SD is associated with negative economic news that could affect Finland, such as the talks of Greek bankruptcy. But that doesn't seem a particularly convincing theory.