Finland: Populist Finns Party Most Popular With Young First-Time Voters

A voter casts a ballot for the country's municipal elections at a polling station at
MIKKO STIG/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images
Chris Tomlinson

 A poll released this week has revealed that the most popular party among young people getting ready to vote for the first time in Finland’s forthcoming national elections this spring is the populist Finns Party.

The poll, which was released this week, states that 28 per cent of the upcoming new voters support the populist Finns Party, far ahead of the Social Democratic Party headed by Prime Minister Sanna Marin, which received just 13 per cent of the vote.

The Greens placed third in the poll with just 11 per cent, but one-fifth of the voters, or around 20 per cent, said they were either not interested in voting or were unwilling to say who they wanted to vote for, broadcaster Yle reports.

The firm Kantar carried out the poll and interviewed 624 people who are eligible to vote for the first time this year in the national elections, which are set to take place on April 2nd at the latest this year.

The poll is a marked difference from national polls going into April’s elections, which have shown the Finnish liberal-conservative National Coalition Party (KOK) leading in opinion polls since the summer of 2021.

A poll released earlier this month put the KOK at 21.6 per cent, followed by Sanna Marin’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) at 19.1 per cent and the Finns Party (PS) at 18.4 per cent. By contrast, the KOK received just nine per cent in the Kantar poll.

The polls are not good news for Prime Minister Marin, who made headlines across the world last summer for scandals surrounding her “party lifestyle” that saw her apologize over a picture of two topless lesbians kissing at her government residence.

The Kantar poll follows similar trends in other European countries, with younger people gravitating more and more toward populist parties.

As far back as 2017, the trend could be seen in France as young first-time voters explained why they were voting for populist Marine Le Pen in that year’s presidential elections, while a year later it was revealed that 75 per cent of first-time young voters in Italy cast their ballots for populist anti-establishment parties.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

 

 

 

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