HS-Gallup | Opposition to NATO membership fell to a record low

January According to HS-Gallup conducted in the first two weeks, 28 per cent of Finns want Finland to join NATO and 42 per cent oppose joining the military alliance. The proportion of uncertainties has risen to almost a third.

The number of supporters of membership has risen by eight percentage points since the end of 2019, when the same question was last asked at the HS poll. 28% support is the highest in the history of HS polls, although it has been around on a few occasions.

However, the most drastic change has taken place among opponents of NATO membership. There have never been so few opponents in the polls of the HS as there are now. For the first time in the history of HS polls, resistance has dropped below 50 percent and even more so clearly.

In HS polls Citizens’ views on NATO positions have been sought 23 times since 2002. The number of opponents of joining NATO has always been at least 53 per cent and at most 68 per cent. So now there are only 42 percent of opponents.

Another big change is the record proportion of the unaware. Thirty percent of respondents said they could not say their position on NATO.

The figure is up six percentage points from the previous survey. In most cases, the share of the uninitiated in HS’s NATO polls has been less than 20%.

The increased share of the unaware is partly due to the exceptionally active NATO debate in Finland during the survey.

The HS poll also asked how respondents would react to NATO membership in the event that Sweden also applied for membership. Then the share of those who favor membership would increase to 38 percent and the share of opponents would decrease to 39 percent.

HS-Gallup The results can be compared, for example, with the work of the National Defense Information Planning Board at the turn of September-October last year. to the survey.

According to it, 51 per cent of Finns at the time were of the opinion that Finland should not aspire to NATO, 24 per cent were positive about membership and 24 per cent could not answer.

HS: n NATO-Gallup has been done since Russia presented in mid-December, demands on the United States and NATO that have been interpreted as leading to a return to lobbying policy. Russia has demanded, among other things, an end to NATO’s enlargement to the east, which has also been considered to affect Finland.

At the same time, the fact that Russia has amassed a large military force on the Ukrainian border has been widely discussed in public. There has been serious public speculation about the possibility of Russia launching a major offensive against Ukraine.

The president of the Republic Sauli Niinistö also thought he had received a lot of attention just before the Gallup operation began New Year’s speech, in which he emphasized that Finland could apply for NATO membership if it so wished.

HS-Gallup broke out at the time of the act unrest In Kazakhstan, where, among other things, Russia sent troops to support the country’s administration.

The poll was also done in part last week, when there was a lot of so-called tension diplomacy super week. At the time, Russia, the United States, and NATO and OSCE participating States were parties to the talks.

In addition, in recent weeks, some well-known Finnish politicians have taken a stand in favor of NATO membership, and some have also announced that they have changed their position on NATO.

For example, there have been those who have changed their position or at least considered it in the green and the Social Democrats.

About parties supporters of the Coalition Party are most in favor of NATO membership. 48 per cent of those who vote for the Coalition Party support applying for membership and 35 per cent oppose it.

The second most popular NATO membership is in the Greens, with 35 per cent in favor and 33 per cent opposed.

30 per cent of basic Finns support NATO membership, 27 per cent of Central Finns, 24 per cent of Social Democrats and nine per cent of Left Allies.

50 per cent of basic Finns, 46 per cent of Central Finns, 43 per cent of Social Democrats and 70 per cent of Left Allies oppose NATO membership.

Specially there has been a change in the Greens in relation to NATO membership. In the autumn of 2019, about one in ten green (12%) supported Finland’s NATO membership. Now the number of supporters is about a third (35%).

Two years ago, 30 per cent of the Greens demanded that Finland follow Sweden if it sought to apply for NATO membership, but now 49 per cent.

There has also been a shift among NATO supporters to the center of NATO. 27 per cent of Centralians now supported NATO membership, up from just 13 per cent two years ago.

In addition, 43% of Centralians would now join NATO if Sweden did. In 2019, the figure was 27 percent.

NATO membership there was a similar jump in support and opposition in 2014, when Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula.

At that time, in about a year, support for joining NATO rose from 18 per cent to 27 per cent in the HS polls and the number of opponents fell from 64 per cent to 57 per cent.