Centre Party and Social Democrats making frantic attempts to recruit new members

Among the large political parties, the Centre Party and the Social Democrats are now making frantic attempts to recruit new membership.
      The recruiters of the Centre Party district associations are going with local guides from house to house in provinces in order to sign up new members for the party.
      At the same time, the Social Democrats are on the move in a slightly more urban way, conducting a telephone campaign and attempting to comb through potential members.
      The National Coalition Party is not actively recruiting at the moment. According to Jarmo Pekkala, the Administration Manager of the National Coalition Party, no recruitment campaigns have been run for years as they ”proved artificial”.
     
Thanks to their recruitment activities, the SDP has managed to slow down the decline in their membership, even though they have not been able to halt the bleeding entirely.
      Last year the party enrolled 1,600 new members, but simultaneously the members are getting older and their numbers are declining at a rapid pace.
      The current number of members is some 50,000, while in the 1970s, when the party achieved its greatest success, the figure was more than 100,000.
      According to SDP Party Secretary Ari Korhonen, the new members are mostly middle-aged.
      ”People take to political activism at a later age, in the same way as they transfer to working life and start a family”, Korhonen argues.
     
In January or February next year, the Centre Party is to complete its integrated membership register that has long been under way and which should eventually give real-time information about the membership numbers of the party.
      The project has been delayed, as it should have been completed already this year. At the moment, only the information about six districts has been entered into the register.
      According to Centre Party Secretary Jarmo Korhonen, the current estimate of the party’s membership is around 170,000. In February it will be possible to find out the number of members just ”by pushing one button”, Korhonen says.
      The real-time system will be tested if the Centre Party decides to arrange a consultative referendum on their next chairman next spring.
     
In younger parties, including the Green League and the True Finns, the growth in the membership has been steady.
      The situation in the Left Alliance, the Swedish People’s Party, and the Christian Democratic Party has been stagnant: some new members are enrolled, while some old ones are leaving.
      According to Panu Laturi, the Party Secretary of the Greens, the main goal of the Green League is to persuade their supporters to enrol as members and thus get them involved in the discussions on the party’s programme and in internal decision-making. Moreover, a member is a more committed supporter than an uncertain voter who can easily change his or her mind.
      The Green League’s goal is to increase its membership from the present slightly over 4,000 to 15,000 by 2015.
     
Laturi notes further that in order to gain more members, the Green League plans to organise urban events for those people who are more interested in discussing politics than participating in organisational activities.
      Membership fees are naturally financially important for political parties, but thanks to party subsidies, none of the parliamentary parties is actually dependent on this income.
      In most parties, the membership fee is deliberately low. For example, the Green League’s membership fee for a normal salary earner is EUR 25 per year.
      ”Our budget is EUR 1.9 million, of which the proportion of membership fees makes approximately EUR 50,000”, reports Panu Laturi.
     
At present, joining a political party and paying the membership fee on the Internet is possible only for the supporters of the SDP and the Green League. Other parties have only an online form on their website, and after completing the form and sending it to the party in question, an aspiring member will have to wait for admission.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  SDP MP Antti Kalliomäki: Jutta Urpilainen has had difficulties as party chairwoman from the start (9.11.2009)

Links:
  Centre Party
  Social Democratic Party
  National Coalition Party
  Green League
  Christian Democrats
  Left Alliance
  True Finns (Wikipedia)
  Swedish People´s Party (Wikipedia)