Antti Lindtman, the chairperson of the Social Democrats, chatted with his party comrade, Kimmo Kiljunen, during a plenary session in the Finnish Parliament on 25 October 2024. Lindtman’s Social Democrats has gained popularity over the last month at the expense of both senior coalition partners, the National Coalition and Finns Party, indicates an opinion poll by YLE. (Mikko Stig – Lehtikuva)
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THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY has solidified its status as the most popular political party in Finland.
YLE on Thursday revealed that its latest poll shows support for the opposition party surging by 1.7 percentage points over the past month, to 24.3 per cent. With the National Coalition seeing its popularity fall by 1.2 points to 18.8 per cent, the gap between the two parties has widened to 5.5 points.
Support for the Finns Party fell by a point to 15.7 per cent.
Both of the ruling right-wing parties have lost supporters to the Social Democrats, according to Tuomo Turja, the research director at Taloustutkimus.
“Traditionally the Social Democrats gets supporters from other red-green parties, but now it looks like it’s getting supporters from the Finns Party and partly from the National Coalition. A clear difference from the previous time is that it’s getting clearly more support from the sleeping party, meaning people who didn’t vote in the previous parliamentary elections,” he commented to YLE on Thursday.
The National Coalition, he added, has lost female, elderly and highly educated voters. The Finns Party, in turn, finds itself in a not unusual situation in that its supporters are retreating to the sidelines.
“The Finns Party is also leaking support to the Social Democrats, as well as the National Coalition and Centre.”
As the Swedish People’s Party and Christian Democrats both gained 0.1 points – rising to 4.0 and 3.5 per cent, respectively – support for the four-party ruling coalition has fallen to its lowest level since it began its term in mid-2023. Its approval rating of 42 per cent is low also in comparison to the two previous governments 18 months into their term.
Support for the Centre appears to have settled around the 13-per-cent mark, dipping by 0.1 points to 13.1 per cent in the poll.
The Left Alliance was the choice of 9.3 per cent of respondents for the second consecutive month, despite the departure of its widely popular chairperson Li Andersson. The Green League saw its popularity creep up by 0.4 points to 8.0 per cent.
Support for Movement Now fell by 0.3 points to 1.1 per cent.
Taloustutkimus interviewed 2,383 people for the poll between 7 October and 5 November. The respondents were asked which party would receive their vote if the parliamentary elections were held now.
The results have a two-point margin of error.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
