Helsingin Sanomat reported today that
according to a poll by several newspapers, the True Finns are now the most popular party in Finland. Their popularity has risen by 3.3% points since the election, while the Social Democrats and Centre party lost a couple points each. The poll was conducted last week, after True Finn leader Timo Soini announced that the True Finns will remain in opposition from the government Coalition.
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| This is Timo Soini's happy face |
Interestingly, Jyrki Katainen's National Coalition party increased its popularity by half a point, even though they will be the prime ministerial party for the new coalition. This may be because Jyrki Katainen did literally everything in his power to secure a coalition that would have included the True Finns, even going as far as to make the Portugal bailout
a separate issue from the formation of said coalition.
In the absence of the True Finns, the new "coalition of losers" as Timo Soini titled them in his usual eloquent fashion, will include the Left Alliance, Social Democrats, Green party, National Coalition and the Christian Democrats in a rough order from political left to right. If you followed the election at all, all of these parties lost votes to the True Finns. For the Social Democrats it was their worst result in all their history. This is roughly the same type of coalition government as the rainbow coalition of the Social Democratic PM Paavo Lipponen, in the 90s. The Coalition does enjoy a rather comfortable parliamentary majority, but excluding the undisputed winner of the elections, in terms of percentage points gained, will be seen by a lot of people as unfair.
