Presidential Election
Never mind Helsinki - what about the orphaned Kihniö and Merijärvi voters?

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By William Moore
     
      The article immediately above this one touches on the dilemmas facing "orphaned" Helsinki voters now that eight have been whittled down to two, but the problems in the capital are nothing by comparison with those of the residents of Kihniö, a small municipality in Pirkanmaa in Western Finland.
      Kihniö first crossed the Finnish political radar in April last year, when it was shown to be the municipality with the highest support for the triumphant True Finns (now the Finns Party).
      As many as 53.2% - an astonishing simple majority - of the local voters backed candidates* from Timo Soini's party in the Parliamentary elections, as against the True Finns' national figure of 19.1%.
     
Last Sunday, too, the apparently extremely eurosceptic voters of Kihniö were out in force for Soini, giving him 20.6%.
      It was the only place in the country where Soini's tally topped 20%, and was more than twice as high as his national showing of 9.4%.
      Even so, Soini did not win in Kihniö - in fact he did not even figure in the top two.
      Sauli Niinistö (National Coalition Party) collected 27.6% (well below his nationwide tally, but enough for second place locally), while the top spot went to another eurosceptic, Paavo Väyrynen of the Centre Party.
      Väyrynen gathered 33.0% of the 1,269 votes cast, and he more than doubled the Centre Party's showing here in the April elections, when they were driven into opposition.
     
He clearly also gobbled up a large slice of the disaffected anti-Europe vote that had gone to the True Finns last year, and in a sense Kihniö offers an image in microcosm of a phenomenon that was seen all over the country in this election: the Centre Party, by picking a candidate with staunchly anti-Brussels views, was able to "bring home" some of the flock it lost so disastrously in 2011.
      An alternative explanation, voiced by Finns Party adherents, is that they felt Timo Soini was of more use to their cause as an MP and party leader than in the Presidential Palace.
      Take your pick.
     
In any event, now Kihniö residents have a problem.
      Nearly 54% of them no longer have a candidate with any real appeal.
      In Helsinki, the figure is appreciably smaller - around 28% of voters are now orphaned in the second round.
     
Kihniö stood out for the support that was given to Soini's candidacy, and to some degree for the striking vote-swap witnessed between the two rival opposition parties, but in actual fact there are communities in Finland where the orphan-votes situation is even more dire.
      Several small constituencies in the Lapland electoral district gave 60% of their votes to Väyrynen and around 10% to Soini, and in Merijärvi, a little place in the Oulu Electoral District, the combined total for these two fallers at the first hurdle was a massive 79.1%.
      Just 11% of Merijärvi voters backed Niinistö, and a tiny 4.5% went behind the nationwide runner-up, Pekka Haavisto of the Greens.
     
Political analysts will be looking very carefully at the voting patterns in these small and usually unsung locations in two weeks' time.
      They will as much as anything be interested to see how low the turnout will go, as local voters cannot find anything to get excited about in either of the two remaining candidates.
      The Centre Party secretary Timo Laaninen, who also served as Väyrynen's campaign manager, has already warned that messages have been arriving from the field that the party should come out and advise its supporters to sit on their hands, and similar stay-at-home talk has come from the Finns Party camp.
     
Places like Kihniö and Merijärvi, and countless other small communites in the rapidly depopulating north and east of the country, highlight the stark divisions that exist within Finland.
      Although Pekka Haavisto and Sauli Niinistö swept home in the cities of the south, that is only part of the reality.
      For the conservative and often nationalist-minded and anti-European voters of the more remote parts of Finland, it will take more than a Facebook campaign or a charm offensive to warm to the idea of backing a gay with Green credentials or even a rollerblading pro-European former Minister of Finance, however much the candidates may speak of wanting to be "a President for all the people".
     
     
*NOTE: The vast majority of the True Finns votes in Kihniö in fact went to local woman Lea Mäkipää, who amassed exactly half of all votes cast in the municipality.
     
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in the International Edition 24.1.2012


Links:
  Ministry of Justice Election Portal - Results by electoral district, municipality, and polling area (Kihniö is in Pirkanmaa electoral district, Merijärvi in Oulu)

Helsingin Sanomat