So I saw a lot of Finns talking about how ridiculous it is that a lot of people are thinking of the election results as a fascist takeover when it’s not. While sure it’s not and normally all parties are more left compared to let’s say the American political parties. But despite that, majority of the areas voted for a, what a lot of people say, very racist party. So I want to know what do you guys think about
I) How did this happen? In Sweden it makes sense because they handled their immigration crisis very poorly but if I recall correctly Finland was fairly sensible with it.
II) What does this (PS winning 20.1%) say about the future outlook of the sociopolitical environment of Finland?

I would love to hear your guys’ opinions on this.

27 comments

  2. It shows how much people concentrate. But also some general attitudes, sure. This year was relatively proportional to last election. Depending if they’re getting into the cabinet, might be similar next time. But nothing kills popularity as easily as actually being able to make the decisions lol

  4. Future outlook…The truth of the matters is as follows.

    The right wing government will hold on to power for four years, screw things up and pave the way for a left wing government taking over, holding power for four years, screwing things up and paving way for a right wing government to take over. Rinse and repeat.

    Here’s to hoping that Kok will at least hold onto their tax-cut policy. I’d like some more of my pay actually going into my pockets for a change.

  6. Good. It makes other parties to think what went wrong, and change to be better.

    EDIT: Especially Central Party (Keskusta), which previously was most voted party in countrysides.

  7. No major thoughts arise from this, went as expected i guess. Keskusta has strayed too far from their voters, which are in the more rural areas of Finland. But then again, i guess some things have to change to be relevant in the future.

  8. While I am a supporter, it slightly surprised me.

    Then again, I knew it was in realm of possibility.

    People voted for change, In last election we got one of the strongest “right wing” turnouts, but with social democrat lead… and ended up with most left leaning government in decades, if not ever.

    While PS is somewhat right leaning, it’s more of a conservative working class party. where SDP is left liberal working class party.

    And after Blue-Blacks movement (Overtly Racist) partly resigned from PS, and partly was kicked out, it bacame a party I could vote for. While still admitting that there are some questionable people in, and in lead positions, it’s good enough.

    This change is because a lot of things we do, we mimic Sweden… And for a while now there has been some issues in some areas of Sweden. The policies that the left liberal parties are pushing would have taken us in same position. Maybe not in 4 years, maybe not in 10, but the direction was clear. And people didn’t want that.

    Also why this happened was because Center party was part of last government, They are the “country side / rural people” party. but during last government, which they were part of, they had to “bow to left” more or less. and this wasn’t what the rural people, especially the ones that lean conservative wanted. They felt “forgotten” or “abanadoned” by their own party.

    Therefore they went looking something new, And there wasn’t that many options for them.

  10. It’s many areas but apart from Oulu most of the biggest cities and the majority of people live in the dark blue and red areas.

    I guess it’s kind of similar to the US. Looking at a map like this it looks like the whole thing is Republican.

    But yeah it’s concerning. And kind of ridiculous, the whole election was very focused on economics and PS doesn’t even have a financial agenda.

  11. This map offers a very poor representation of elections in Finland, which can be misleading.

    It matters little who won majority of votes in one municipality, when the difference is a couple percent.

    Looks more suitable for US elections with their two-party system.

  13. Traditional rural Finland of farmers and landowners is changing into newly sub-urbanized village centers, and PS caters for small business owners and unemployed blue collar workers in these areas. It shows how Finland is still urbanizing and how the economics differ between countryside and the biggest city centers.

    We could start to call them a new socio-economic class, the villagers.
    Not city folk and not farmers, but something in between.

  14. Finland has not been sensible with immigration policy. We are perfectly following sweden’s footprints 10 years behind them. Its funny that the ex party leader of Perussuomalaiset (Jussi Halla-Aho) was talking about this exact thing around 2014 and that’s also when Perussuomalaset were labeled as facists and racist. In the most laughable videos the interviewer is even silencing him when he tries to answer the questions she asks him. If you look at his interviews now, almost every scenario he spoke about has come true.

    Furthermore, Perussuomalaiset and Kristillisdemokraatit are the only ones that have a healthy nationalistic pride and favour finnish traditions, values and culture over American “imports”, which is why they are likely popular in the countryside. Previously Keskusta was also seen as defenders of finnish lifestyle and tradition but during the last 8 years they have adopted more leftist views.

  15. The thing is that PS politics is not sustainable for the future of Finland. There will never be a situation where PS would be allowed to have their way. There might be slight compromises just to make the collaboration working but nothing major. All that bs about leaving the EU is just not going to happen, ever, because all other parties are pro EU. Lastly, it is actually very easy to exclude PS from being a ruling party. It could be done even if they won because that’s the way the system works.

    One party alone doesn’t really have that much power in Finland which is a good thing, no matter which party.

    So my thoughts are.. tomorrow we will have Nato-kahvit and the PS party will be the last thing in our minds.

  16. I think too much is made of populist far right victories, I think even when they do well they generally have a ceiling which is hard to breach. Like people who don’t vote for them more often seem to really hate them. This so good for me because I don’t like them either. Like huge polarization effects whenever they do well.

    Also the Finn’s party seems less far right than other populist parties, which might also be a reason for success.

    The problem is people call them racist when they are clearly xenophobic, and in the European context left groups seem to unable to acknowledge that immigrants from many cultural groups often commit more crimes than natives so they they just seem like they can’t call the sky blue and lose voters.

    In order to counter that messaging I hope someone is like yes there is a modest increase in crime but immigrants also do x y and z and you can’t judge all immigrants based on the charter is tics of their cultural group. In debates when far right politicians are like bad immigrants should go home we should be like sure, yes, but what the hell does that have to do with your restrictionist immigration policy and then they’ll be in a tight spot because they’ll have to generalize and reveal themselves as xenophobic.

    This is just my general impression though, I haven’t looked too closely in on the matter

  18. Other parties, especially the leftist trio of SDP, Greens and the left alliance (and the center party too, being the lapdog puppy of the left) – have done pretty much all they can to boost PS into election victory. Completely playing towards PS benefit in so many ways. Ignoring valid concerns and issues (the kind that people often can observe and conclude to be real by themselves). These other parties are kind of pretending these issues don’t exist even. The list is long: immigrant crime and violence issues, issues caused by politically misplaced green energy initiatives, the dysfunctional foreign aid programs, total crisis of government overspending, EU bloating outside of its core scope of single European market and into coercive legislation of forced renovations of buildings etc etc. I am not a PS supporter myself, however it’s amazing to see how much the parties on the left boost PS in all things. They really work hard for PS benefit – and the success of PS is to a great degree their making. It’s amazing that PS didn’t come up as the first and most popular with the level of boost they are constantly getting from the left.

  19. As an child of immigrants I’ve always known not to leave uusimaa. It’s just common sense to know that i am not welcommed in smaller towns.

  21. Well, this was seen coming. Government parties, specially Centre party, failed their core voters really bad.

  22. It shows that the Left and Green parties in big cities are estranged from rest of the Finland.

    Direct quote from Ville Niinistö: ”Meillä on ollut kaikkein aikojen vihrein hallitusohjelma, jonka jälkeen vihreät on saanut suurimman vaalitappionsa ikinä. Tässä on ilmeinen epäsuhta”.

    Which would translate about to: We’ve had the most green/greenest government/political plan ever, after which Green Party had the biggest electoral loss ever. Here is a mismatch.”

    Without their usual arrogance, one would think that the result are exactly matching. Finnish people don’t agree with their green politics!

  24. This only confirms the perception that The Finns Party is closer to the centre than right. They are the new Centre Party, perhaps with an emphasis on national conservatism. Some idiots simply do not understand this, while those hard core leftists, who will see nazis everywhere they look at, are just unwilling to accept it. And foreigners don’t know that the Finns Party is the successor of the Finnish Rural Party (Suomen Maaseudun Puolue, SMP). The Centre Party succumbed to excessive left-wing politics and forgot their voters.

  25. People have found a more effective alternative to Donald Duck and caricatures of vulva as a protest vote. Maybe other parties will listen.

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