Finnish parliamentary election 2011

Voter backing for the populist True Finns party has surged to 16.9 percent in a fresh survey conducted for YLE by pollster Taloustutkimus. Conversely, support for the Social Democrats has dropped to hitherto unseen levels.

The True Finns’ heady rise in the polls is continuing, with the party’s voter backing up by 0.3 percentage points since January. Although other parties made predictions of a fall in the True Finns' backing, the party’s support did not peak with the record January figures.

The conservative National Coalition Party retains the top spot with 20.9 percent backing. Their support increased by half a percent since last month.

The Centre Party’s standing has also improved somewhat, with 18.9 percent of the poll’s respondents opting in its favour. This is an increase of 0.4 percentage points on January.

The main opposition party, the Social Democrats, has suffered further drops in popularity. Only 17.5 percent of respondents supported it in January, which makes it the lowest result since YLE started measuring party backing in 2006.

Support for the Green League has also fallen. February’s figure stands at 8.5 percent, down by 0.7 since last month. In fact, current backing for the Greens is at exactly the same level as their result in the 2007 parliamentary elections.

The Left Alliance attracted 7.3 percent of poll respondents in February, which is a 0.1 percentage point rise since January.

February also brought a slight rise in the polls for the Christian Democrats and a slight fall for the Swedish People’s Party, whose backing stands now at 4.2 percent and 3.9 percent respectively. Since January, the Christian Democrats rose in the poll by 0.4 percentage points and the Swedish People’s Party fell by 0.2 percent.

The category “other” has grown in popularity, with 1.9 percent of respondents supporting parties currently without a parliamentary presence.

Taloustutkimus conducted phone interviews with 2,901 people in Finland between February 1 and 23. Of them, 67.9 respondents stated their party preference. In earlier surveys, about 71 percent of respondents have done so. The margin of error is 1.7 percentage points.

A new opinion poll commissioned by YLE shows the conservative National Coalition remains the largest single party in the run-up to next month’s parliamentary election. Support for the party in March stood at 20.1 percent.

Support for the populist True Finns Party continues to rise. The party gained 17.2 percent of support, just a hair's breadth behind the Centre and Social Democratic parties, each with 18.1 percent support.

In this latest poll, the Green league gained nine percent of support followed by the Left Alliance with seven percent, with both the Christian Democrats each with around four percent.

Pollster Taloustutkimus interviewed 2,428 people earlier this month. Just over two-thirds of respondents revealed their party support. The margin of error is 1.6 percentage points. Finns go to the polls in exactly one month’s time on April, 17.

On April 04 2011 18:47 iMAniaC wrote:
So, in short: Could someone explain, or give me a link to, which parties are likely to join up for the purpose of gathering votes, and which will most certainly not join up with True Finns? In addition, could anyone tell me what the effects of bringing a party above the election threshhold is? Finally, any insight into how to maximize the effect of one's vote, that I haven't thought of, is of course, also welcome. (Links in Finnish as well as English are also okay).

Polling stations in Helsinki, Lapua and Tampere reported heightened voting activity, with queues developing at some locations. In Helsinki’s Kallio district, some voters had already formed queues ahead of the official opening of local polling stations.

Martti Pöyhönen told YLE that he was looking forward to the result of today’s election. "I’ve already bought buns and coffee to cheer when my candidate becomes a Member of Parliament,” he said of his choice.

For her part, voter Sanna Pykäläinen said the election debates had helped reinforce her election day choice. “I already knew in advance who I’d vote for and all of the pre-election debates have confirmed my decision,” she explained.

Voters have until eight o’clock Sunday evening to influence the look and tone of the new Parliamentary line-up. By then political pundits would have already compiled the results of advance voting.

Some 32 percent of voters chose to cast their ballots ahead of election day, compared to 29 percent during the 2007 parliamentary election.

Election day ballots will be counted by the Election Board. After 8.00 pm, YLE will broadcast its initial exit polls, which have closely reflected the final winners and losers for the past decade.

Election officials will have an initial count of ballots cast across the country by midnight Sunday.

YLE

On December 02 2010 09:39 Too_MuchZerg wrote:
True Finns with 14,9% poll (4,0% last election, currently 5 seats) is only party that opposes EU. Currently their partly leader Timo Soini is in EU though. Gained a lot of new votes past year. Party had 6,4% poll year ago and now is closing gap to major parties. Slightly hates immigration and uses EU problems to boost their party voting share.

Election officials in Oulu say they’re not certain to complete counting advance ballots cast in the 2011 Parliamentary election.

Early Sunday evening Mika Penttilä, Returning Officer for the Oulu Electoral Board signaled that the results of advance voting in the Oulu electoral district could take longer than usual. About 114,000 electors took advantage of the opportunity to cast early ballots.

Voting activity on the official poll day Sunday was also brisk in Oulu, with early projections of voter turnout forecast at over 70 percent.

YLE