HS analysis The return of the big three and the loss of identity politics? The results of the regional elections do not necessarily indicate a wider change in policy

The election result, similar to the regional elections, was last seen in the 2007 parliamentary elections. What should be thought of?

When the advance sounds of the regional elections on Sunday night flashed into the box, he had to rub his eyes properly. There were so many seconds on the screen. They have hardly been seen in the run-up to last year’s elections.

At the start of the counting of votes in the regional elections, all three major parties all had more than 20 percent support. As the calculation progressed, the SDR and the center fell slightly below, but were still close to 20 percent in the final results. The Coalition Party was clearly over.

For example, in the previous parliamentary elections in 2019, no party received more than 20 percent support. Even in last summer’s municipal elections, only the Coalition Party and nothing else even close.

The year 2019 After the parliamentary elections, the election analyzes reiterated that Finland had moved from the power of the three major parties to 4–5 medium-sized parties.

But on Sunday in the regional elections, the big three were here again. The difference between the Coalition Party and the fourth-ranked Finns was more than ten percentage points.

It felt like I had moved on to the past decade with a time machine. The last time the hegemony of the three great ones has been seen in the 2007 parliamentary elections.

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And that’s not all.

Regional elections the biggest losers were the Basic Finns and the Greens.

(Talking about losers or winners in regional elections is a bit funny, because they were the first of their kind in history. So no one actually lost or won seats.)

However, the basic Finns and the Greens performed poorly – compared to both the previous municipal and parliamentary elections – even if they take into account the result of the municipal elections without Helsinki, which did not vote in these regional elections.

Basic Finns and Greens also missed a lot of support polls conducted before the regional elections.

So they both failed badly.

Interesting here is that the hegemony of the three great ones has been broken by a change in policy. Alongside the old traditional right-to-left division, a new dividing line has risen strongly – the GAL-TAN dimension in the language of political scholars. It is an abbreviation of the words green, alternative, libertarian mixed traditional, authoritarian, nationalist (green, alternative and libertarian / traditional, authoritarian and nationalist).

It is therefore not a question of attitudes towards income distribution – as on the right-left axis – but of social and cultural values. That is, about the identity policy that has been put to good use in recent years.

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In Finnish In politics, the Greens and Basic Finns, who have represented the extremes of this thirst, have excelled in this battlefield of identity politics.

Now both failed in the regional elections.

Some comments on election night already had time to reflect on the return to power of the three major parties and the waning of identity politics. Many even seem to dream of a return to a period of consensus in decades, with two of the three major parties always on the government and a third waiting for their turn after the next election. And not so terrified of immigration or intersectional feminism.

But based on the results of the regional elections, such a conclusion and interpretation cannot properly be made.

Finns – or the 47.5 per cent of those entitled to vote who exercised their right to vote – wanted to elect these people now elected to regional councils to represent themselves on councils in sote matters. It is not possible to draw any further conclusions.

Of course, it can be said that the Basic Finns and the Greens did not convince the voters in this election to conduct war. But in the next parliamentary elections, sote is just one theme among others. These regional elections do not really give any indication of success in those elections.

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The Coalition Party, The success of the SDP and the city center is explained by the fact that they were all able to operate in their own comfort zone in the regional elections. The Coalition had the opportunity to talk about the economy and the recklessness of the Red Greens government, the Sdp welfare state and the center of the provinces and local services in remote areas.

It was somewhat easy for them to inspire them to vote.

And, of course, the regional elections will also have an impact on general politics in the coming months. Both the Greens and the basic Finns certainly need to be profiled in the government and the opposition during the spring. And especially in an existential crisis, a dashing center gets faith in its own with a good election result. That not the last bachelor is turning off the lights of the party office.

But what is the answer to the question in the title of the story. Do the regional elections say anything about the change in Finnish politics?

No.

The results of the regional elections really only tell about these regional elections. Not necessarily any of its broader and more far-reaching.

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