The collapse of Finnish right-wing populism?

First published at Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

Local and regional elections on April 13 have delivered an historic defeat to Finland’s ruling right-wing populist party The Finns (Perussuomalaiset), which saw its support almost halved compared to the last local elections. The left-green bloc made significant gains across the country, and in the welfare-responsible regional councils in particular a record number of women will play a decisive role in shaping and implementing social and health care policy.

Double elections, double trouble

For the first time, Finland held simultaneous elections for both municipal and regional councils, with voters electing over 8,500 representatives for 292 Finnish municipalities and more than 1,300 mandates in the 22 new “welfare regions” created by the 2022 health and social care reform. Local councils — from Helsinki (over 650,000 inhabitants) to the EU’s northernmost municipality, Utsjoki (just 1,100 inhabitants) — are responsible for education, urban planning, and community services, while regional councils oversee healthcare, hospitals, and elderly care.

Though regional and local issues dominated the elections, national politics loomed large. Austerity is already straining public services, especially in rural areas and with an aging population. In Eastern and Northern Finnish regions, councillors face growing healthcare needs and shrinking budgets. The vote thus served as a mid-term referendum on the Orpo government’s “cabinet of horrors” and its policy of deep social cuts.

The Social Democrats clearly won these elections, with over 23 percent support nationwide — 5.3 percent more than in 2021 — and gained almost 250 municipal seats. Support for Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s National Coalition Party (NCP) remained stable at just under 22 percent, while the Centre Party came in third with 16.4 percent. The other opposition parties, the Greens (10.5 percent) and the Left Alliance (9.3 percent), also achieved good results. While the Social Democrats and the Left celebrated, however, the mood among Finland’s right-wing populists was rather less pleasant.

Historic defeat of The Finns

The concerned faces of The Finns leaders on election night dominated the front pages of the Finnish press on Monday. The result for the party was tantamount to a crushing loss. From over 14% in the last local elections, the party fell to just 7.6 percent support, and it lost over 700 of its more than 1,300 municipal seats, placing it far behind the Social Democrats, NCP, and Centre Party.

In the wake of the heavy electoral blow, party leader and incumbent Finance Minister Riikka Purra cancelled scheduled interview appointments and was nowhere to be found for over an hour at the party’s election party. She later issued a brief statement through her press office that there was “nothing to comment on”.

Well, hardly. In the April 2023 parliamentary elections, The Finns had secured second place with over 20 percent of the vote. They entered into coalition with the centre-right NCP, the Swedish People’s Party and the Christian Democrats — forming Finland’s most right-wing government since the Second World War. Having already suffered a heavy blow in the European elections, this renewed fall from grace has left The Finns facing a period of introspection and increased scrutiny.

Scandals and a summer of shame

Almost as soon as the government was formed, it was entangled in a series of far-right scandals involving Finns politicians. Old internet forum posts by Riikka Purra surfaced in which she expressed violent fantasies and disdain for the poor. Interior Minister and former police officer Mari Rantanen had to distance herself from earlier statements promoting racist conspiracy theories about “the Great Replacement”.

Economic Affairs Minister Vilhelm Junnila resigned after just 11 days — Finland’s shortest ministerial term — following revelations he had spoken at a neo-Nazi demonstration, shared memes with Ku Klux Klan jokes, and made overt references to Hitler and neo-Nazi symbolism. These scandals sparked mass protests and critical international coverage but had surprisingly limited short-term electoral effect.

It was not the racism scandals, though, but the government’s harsh austerity policies — the effects of which are now hitting even the middle class — that have had a lasting impact. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and Finance Minister Purra have pursued a radical policy of harsh budget cuts slashing development aid, housing benefits, and unemployment support, increasing VAT, and restricting the right to strike.

The price of austerity

In its two years in government, Orpo’s cabinet has passed numerous austerity packages, aiming to reduce public spending by no less than 6 billion euro in one legislative period. The most recent round of cuts, passed at the end of March, is expected to result in “savings” of over 160 million euros in the social and healthcare sectors alone ­by 2028.

These cuts have affected social (and, consequently, voter) groups unequally. The NCP’s more affluent voter base — largely from the upper middle class and more likely to rely on private healthcare — has felt little impact. At the same time, Finland’s top earners have been spared major tax increases. By contrast, The Finns’ more working-class support base, which often depends heavily on public healthcare, has borne the brunt of clinic closures and reduced services.

Meanwhile, a March 2024 Instagram post showing Purra smiling while holding a pair of scissors — alongside other Finns MPs — was widely seen as symbolic of the government’s cold, unsympathetic approach. Purra’s now-infamous statement that “empathy does not belong in politics” has further confirmed her role as a kind of Finnish Margaret Thatcher, trying to anchor the logic of austerity in Finnish discourse. With Purra front and centre in the public eye, the Finns party has come to embody the cruelty of the cuts — and it seems to have paid the political price. Despite its leading role in government, however, the NCP appears to have avoided the electorate’s anger — repeating a trend already visible in the 2024 European elections.

Regional backlash

The impact of the government’s unpopular policies was obvious in many regions. The austerity agenda has been felt most keenly, however, in places like Oulainen, where the closure of the local hospital forced residents to travel over 100 kilometres for care. In this small town of 7,000 inhabitants, The Finns lost more than half of their support and two of their four city councillors. Across the country, particularly in rural areas hit hard by healthcare cuts, voters sent a similar message — penalising The Finns at the ballot box.

Unable to play effectively its core issues like migration and security during a campaign focused on more mundane issues, The Finns had tried to focus on culture-war themes, such as opposing LGBTQ-inclusive sex education in schools, which the party described as a “perversion”. The strategy backfired, particularly as several candidates were involved in scandals, including domestic violence convictions and — in one case — calls to legalise AI-generated child pornography. Such moral hypocrisy may have further alienated voters already disillusioned with the effects of austerity.

Finns voters – Staying home, switching sides

The Finns’ support collapsed not only because of voter defection, but also due to sheer apathy. As political scientist Kimmo Grönlund of Åbo Akademi University explained to public broadcaster YLE: “Around 10% of former ‘The Finns’ voters switched to the National Coalition Party or the Social Democrats. The majority simply stayed at home.” Voter turnout dropped to just 54.2 percent, an historic low that affected The Finns more than others. The Finns’ often unstable voter base tends to only show its full potential in national elections, with many of the party’s voters often staying away from local elections. Widespread disillusionment with its policies while in government appears to have led many to do so once again.

While the right-wing populists failed to motivate their own voter base to come to the ballot box, the other parties were apparently more successful. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s conservative NCP largely held its ground with 21.9 percent, despite its leading role in driving austerity. However, the party lost control in several cities, including Turku, Vantaa and Tampere, where social democratic candidates now lead the local governments.

In addition, the mechanics of the voting system highlighted The Finns’ lack of broad-based support even before election day. In Finland’s open-list proportional representation system, all votes for candidates on a party list contribute to the party’s overall success, rewarding parties with a broad base of candidates, as both party support and individual popularity determine electoral outcomes. While all parties struggled to fill their local lists, The Finns fielded a staggering 2,000 fewer candidates than in 2021 — substantially reducing its ability to capitalise on the personal appeal of individual candidates at a time when broader support for the party was waning.

Pressure builds on government role

The electoral defeat might have long-lasting repercussions for The Finns party’s fortunes. With this loss marking the third electoral defeat for The Finns since entering government, internal calls to leave the coalition — or to demand more influence — are growing, particularly among the party base and in the local party chapters. Even Timo Soini, the party’s founder, long-standing chairman, and former foreign minister, voiced his disapproval: “The party has become an auxiliary party that has no plan of its own and has only become part of the plan of the National Coalition Party,” he wrote on his blog.

The Finns is likely to focus on raising its profile within the coalition in order to avoid severe punishment in the next elections.. This could, for example, result in lower taxes on car fuel or tax relief for employees, as well as even harsher tones in the so-called culture war. Leaving the coalition government before the elections is also conceivable in order for the party to distinguish itself more clearly from the NCP.

A rising left

While the right has faltered, for the opposition parties the election results were a reason to celebrate. The Social Democrats gained by more than 5 percentage points nationally, while the Left Alliance added more than 1.3 percent. Left Alliance leader Minja Koskela wrote on Instagram: “Finland is moving to the left — the government no longer has a mandate”. Indeed, while the NCP vote itself remained stable, the ruling coalition as a whole received just 38% of the vote in the local elections.

The Left Alliance has presented itself as a clear opposition to the government’s austerity policies, gaining credibility with voter on social issues. The Left Alliance held hundreds of campaign stands across the country with highly motivated members, while in Turku, former chairwoman Li Andersson also emulated the recent successful campaign of Germany’s Die Linke, attempting a short door-to-door campaign.

In the larger cities in particular, majorities have shifted significantly to the left. In Helsinki, the Left Alliance secured over 17 percent — the party’s best result since 1976 — and increased its city council seats from 11 to 15. The Greens also gained in the regional elections, improving by 1.7 percent nationwide. While there was a migration from the Greens and Left Alliance to the Social Democratic Party at the last parliamentary elections, it is striking that all major parties in the left-green bloc improved their position this time around.

Women at the helm

Reinforcing this shift, the elections also brought a historic influx of women into office — especially in the welfare regions. Over 58% of the approximately 1,300 new regional councillors are women, often with professional experience in medicine, care work, psychology, or social services. Many of these are traditionally female-dominated occupations, underscoring voters’ preference for candidates whose expertise is grounded in the everyday realities of health and social care.

For many of these candidates, Purra’s statement that politics should be “empathy-free” was not merely wrong — it served as a motivation for them to campaign harder. The Greens and the Left Alliance fielded female-majority lists, with women making up 79 percent and 57 percent of elected candidates respectively. Their grassroots, human-centred approach stood in stark contrast to the governing coalition’s technocratic and antisocial austerity.

A new left for a new Finland?

This broader progressive shift was also reflected in the performance and profile of the Left Alliance. In an early analysis, Kansan Uutiset, the Left Alliance’s affiliated newspaper, described the party’s transformation from a traditional labour party into an urban, feminist modern left-wing party: “26 percent of all votes for the Left Alliance came from Helsinki… Of the 15 elected in Helsinki, two are men. You can think what you like about this — the important thing is to realise that this is now a fact.”

Yet challenges remain. Despite gaining over 26,000 votes, the Left Alliance added only 27 new municipal seats, partly due to the urban concentration of its support and decline in former strongholds like Kemi in the north. And while the left’s candidate pool at the local and regional levels is stronger than ever — and provides a solid foundation for future growth — its ability to effect and finance change still depends on decisions made at the national level.

Looking ahead

So, while the momentum is evident, so too are the limits. Without fiscal autonomy, the municipalities and welfare regions remain constrained in their ability to counteract the effects of that national government’s austerity policy. Even the most capable and committed elected representatives may find themselves powerless in the face of continued budget tightening, no matter how much local support they enjoy.

Still, these elections have sent a strong message. Voters have begun to shift course, rejecting hard-right populism and embracing alternatives grounded in care, competence, and community. The result has also made it clear that Finland’s left-green bloc can grow in support as a whole, and not just compete amongst itself for a limited number of votes. The next parliamentary elections are two years away. If the trend of this “double election” holds, Finland may soon see a left-green coalition government once again — probably led by the Social Democrats — and The Finns relegated to the margins of national politics.

This time, it will be the voters who hold the scissors.

Robert Stark is a Rosa Luxemburg Foundation alumnus and member of the Left Alliance in Helsinki.