Finnish parliamentary election – 14 April 2019

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Given how absurdly fragmented the Finnish party system is and that Finnish politics tends to operate on a basically consensual model, I'm not sure whether it matters that much who does or doesn't top the poll. Still, the surge in support during the campaign for PS has to count as one of the most effective uses of culture war politics in Europe in recent memory.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is looking like an absolutely awful result for the SDP even if they top the poll, pretty comparable to the "win" of Swedish S in 2014. Their second-worst result ever. If their highs look like this, I don't think they want to know what their lows may look like.

The SDP is very much a party of smaller towns; always was. Given longterm population movements this is a little bit problematic and means that the party has undergone a pretty substantial structural retrenchment in the scope and scale of its support. This is actually a bigger problem than the fact that its electorate is older than average; that, in itself, is not automatically a problem.