Popular support for the far-right Finns party has fallen by 3.3% to 15%, according to a poll of the independent full service market research company Taloustutkimus. The opposition party led by Riikka Purra comes third behind the Social Democrats (19.0%) and the National Coalition (21.2%). As Tuomo Turja, the research director at Taloustutkimus told YLE, the Finns party loses supporters to various directions, especially to the national-conservative National Coalition, the liberal Movement Now, and the newly founded far-right Power Belongs to the People.
The Finns party emerged as the second party in the national elections of 2019. It received the support of the 17.7% of the electorate and arrived just behind the National Coalition. To isolate the hard anti-EU party, five parties – mainly the National Coalition, Social democrats, Centre, Green League, and Left Alliance – formed a coalition government.
The government introduced a reform to the public health system transferring responsibility for social, healthcare, and emergency services from 294 individual municipalities to 21 new regional authorities whose boards are elected directly through county elections.
The first county elections held on Sunday 6, January 2022, show the five parties of the coalition government the winners at the expense of smaller and right-wing populist parties.
According to Tuomo Turja, among the reasons for the Finns drop is the county elections, which focused on social and health care services, where the party is weak. Finns won 11.1% of the votes cast in the elections and 155 seats on the councils of the well-being services counties.
“The Finns Party’s popularity was on the decline throughout January. It suggests that its supporters’ interest in politics, in general, has waned,” Turja told YLE.
