In the parliamentary elections that took place on Sunday in Finland the party with the most votes was the centre-right National Coalition Party (PCN), followed by the Finns, a far-right populist party: both were in opposition in the previous legislature. On the other hand, only the Social Democrats of outgoing Prime Minister Sanna Marin came third, the party that had won the 2019 elections, and which has since governed with a coalition of centre-left parties.
In Finland we vote with a proportional system with preferences. There is no formal automatism, but in practice it is up to the party with the most votes to indicate the prime minister or prime minister. It is therefore highly probable that Petteri Orpo, leader of the NCP, will be the next Finnish prime minister, but he will first have to find a majority to support him. With 90 percent of ballots counted, projections put the NCP at 20.5 percent, some 3,000 more votes than the Finns at 20.2 percent, while the Social Democrats are given 19.9 percent.
According to projections, the NCP will have 48 seats in parliament and the Finns 43. The Social Democrats should instead get 43 seats. All three parties have gained support and seats since the 2019 elections, especially to the detriment of the other parties that support the outgoing government: the Center Party is expected to lose 8 seats, the Greens 7 and the Left Alliance 5.
The results do not differ much from the forecasts made by analysts before the elections, which gave the three parties all in all very close. In recent weeks there was speculation that the NCP could form a government alliance with the Social Democrats, also considering the fact that Marin is still very popular among Finns. But given the good result of the Finns, if the NCP decides to govern with the latter, the presence of the Social Democrats in the majority would be excluded. Marin repeatedly criticized the Finns for their policies very hard on immigration and there he defined “an openly racist party”.