Its victory was even more pronounced than the votes predicted in the pre-election period, and public support fell for both second- and third-ranked parties, the Social Democrats and the Center Party. The National Coalition Party should be particularly pleased with its landslide victories in Helsinki (25.7%), Espoo (36.2%) and Turku (23.2%).
“This is a solid result” Petteri Orpo, Chairman of the National Coalition, said Helsingin Sanomat.
“Our message has come through. People have given us strong confidence to take care of municipal affairs. The national coalition is a tighter municipal party than the parliamentary party. “
Nationwide, support for the Social Democrats fell by 1.7 percentage points to 17.7 per cent and support for the Central Party by 2.6 percentage points to 14.9 per cent. The former has reason to be disappointed with its performance, but the latter exceeded at least the most pessimistic forecasts of less than 12 per cent of the vote and retained its party in the party representing the most municipal councilors, which had 2,448 seats throughout Finland.
“If the election results remained the same, it would beat all expectations,” Annika SaarikkoThe chairman of the center told Helsingin Sanomat.
The Social Democratic Party rejected the national coalition by a margin of 0.1 points in Tampere and won 24.3 percent of the vote in a city of nearly 240,000 inhabitants. It also became the largest party in Jyväskylä (19.1%) and remained in the same position in Lahti (24.9%) and Pori (21.5%) despite a significant drop.
However, in both Pori and Jyväskylä it has the same number of seats as the national coalition.
“When you lose support, you can’t be happy as chairman. I’m sure we’ll analyze this result carefully,” he commented. Sanna Marin, President of the Social Democrats.
The Finnish party improved considerably from the previous municipal elections and increased its turnout by 5.6 percentage points to 14.5 per cent. Although it did not meet the expectations based on the survey, its profits were particularly impressive in Lahti (7.8 points), Tampere (7.4 points), Turku (5.7), Oulu (5.4), Vantaa (5.0), Jyväskylä (4.8) and Pori (4.8). ).
“I think the result looks pretty good regardless of the comparison,” the president said Jussi Halla-aho told Helsingin Sanomat. “We have never been able to understand our nationwide support in the municipal elections. This is largely explained by turnout.
The turnout was indeed historically low, with only 55.1 per cent of eligible people voting, according to the Ministry of Justice. The turnout represents a decrease of 3.8 percentage points from the previous elections and a new low in the municipal elections since 1945, when conditions were exceptional due to the ongoing Lapland war.
As many as a third, or 1.47 million voters, vote in advance.
“It was 55.9 percent in 2000” said Sami Borg, YLE’s election analyst. “We left it even now. Unfortunately, we have a lot of big cities where the majority didn’t want to vote. “
The low turnout in large cities may explain, at least in part, the nearly two-point drop recorded by the Green League (10.6%). Aiming for the best result and victory in the municipal elections so far, the popularity of the ruling party in the Finnish capital decreased by 5.2 points in Turku (14.4%), 4.5 points in both Tampere (15.5%) and Vantaa (13.3%)), 4, 2 points in both Helsinki (19.8%) and Espoo (18.2%), 3.5 points in Lahti (7.9%), 2.5 points in Jyväskylä (17.4%) and 2.3 points in Oulu (12 .4%).
Support from the Left Alliance fell 0.9 percentage points to 7.9 per cent and support from the Christian Democrats fell 0.5 percentage points to 3.6 per cent. In contrast, the Swedish People’s Party’s share of the vote increased by 0.1 percentage points to 5.0%.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
Source: The Nordic Page