Tytti Tuppurainen and Antti Lindtman of the Social Democrats attended a question-time debate in the Parliament House in Helsinki on 12 December 2024. The Social Democratic Party’s lead over other parties has widened to 4.5 percentage points, after a 1.5-point jump in popular support to 24.0 per cent, indicates the latest opinion poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat. (Jussi Nukari – Lehtikuva)
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POPULAR SUPPORT for the Social Democratic Party has increased noticeably in the past month, providing the opposition party with a comfortable lead over other parties in Finland, shows the latest opinion poll conducted for Helsingin Sanomat by Verian.
Support for the party has increased by 1.5 percentage points to 24.0 per cent – an increase that is attributable to a number of reasons, according to Sakari Nurmela, a research director at Verian.
Nurmela on Wednesday told Helsingin Sanomat that the Social Democratic Party has fared better than other parties in holding on to the supporters it won over in the run-up to the previous parliamentary elections, as well as picked up hesitant supporters from the Finns Party, Green league and Left Alliance.
The party was the only to register an up-tick in popular support in the poll.
The National Coalition and Finns Party, the two largest members of the right-wing ruling coalition, lost 0.3 and 0.6 points to fall to 19.5 and 15.7 per cent, respectively. The Centre fell from 12.2 to 12.1 per cent, the Left Alliance from 9.1 to 8.5 per cent and the Swedish People’s Party from 3.9 to 3.8 per cent.
The Green League and Christian Democrats saw no change in their approval ratings, the former winning the backing of 7.8 per cent and the latter 3.9 per cent of the poll respondents.
A little over a quarter, or 27 per cent, of the respondents were unsure about which party would receive their vote if the parliamentary elections were held now. The long-term average for the undecided share is about 30 per cent.
Verian interviewed altogether 2,418 people for the poll between 18 November and 13 December. The results have a margin of error of 2.0 per cent for the largest parties.
The respondents were also posed a supplementary question to gauge the likelihood of them turning out in the municipal elections scheduled to take place on 13 April 2025. The responses, together with the approval ratings of parties, provide an indication of the number of votes each party can expect with a relatively high degree of certainty in the elections.
The National Coalition and Social Democrats are both in a favourable position heading into the elections, Helsingin Sanomat reported on Thursday.
Up to 86 per cent of National Coalition supporters said they will certainly vote, suggesting that the party can all but count on nearly 520,000 supporters, according to calculations made by Verian. The number corresponds roughly with the vote share the party won in the previous municipal elections, 21.4 per cent.
Also the Social Democratic Party is on track to at least match its 17.7-per-cent vote share in the previous elections, according to Verian. The market research company calculated that the opposition party can expect with a relatively high degree of confidence little over 446,000 votes, a number that exceeds its haul in the previous elections.
Six in ten of its supporters stated that they will vote certainly and 27 per cent that they will vote probably.
“It looks like the National Coalition and Social Democrats, for example, have a good opportunity to repeat their municipal election performance judging by the current situation and currently available information. Also the Left Alliance’s situation looks fairly promising,” Nurmela said to Helsingin Sanomat.
The Centre, Finns Party and Green League have the most work to do to convince their supporters to head to the polls, the calculations indicate. With 57 per cent of Finns Party supporters saying they will certainly vote, the party can be relatively assured of slightly more than 277,000 votes, a haul that would signal a significant drop from the previous elections, when the party won 14.5 per cent of the vote.
The share of respondents who were certainly or probably not voting was the highest for the Finns Party (13%), Social Democrats (12%), Movement Now (11%) and Green League (9%).
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
