Finland’s high-profile PM Marin defeated by National Coalition Party in tight race

Finland’s high-profile prime minister Sanna Marin appears out of a job after voters backed the country’s two biggest right-wing parties in Sunday’s general election.

After a tight campaign, near-complete results late on Sunday evening saw the opposition centre-right National Coalition Party (NCP) in first place with 20.6 per cent of the vote, up 10 points, to secure 48 seats in the 200-seat parliament.

The results, based on 94 per cent of total votes, give the NCP and its 53-year-old leader Petteri Orpo a mandate to lead coalition talks. This could take weeks as he needs at least two partners and has vowed to consult all elected parties.

“This projection suggests there’s a strong mandate for our policies,” said Mr Orpo. “With this result we can begin to build a new government Finland.”

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It remains unclear, though, with whom. The far-right populist Finns Party finished second with 20.2 per cent of the vote and 46 seats while the outgoing governing Social Democrats (SDP) finished third with 19.9 per cent or 43 seats.

Far-right Finns leader Riikka Purra congratulated her rivals and said she was “overjoyed” to have secured the best result in her party’s history.

After Ms Marin became Europe’s youngest leader in 2019, the result appears to end the run of the 37-year-old SDP prime minister – though she has not ruled out a minority coalition role for her party. She earned global attention – unusual for a Finnish politician – after smartphone videos leaked of parties with friends in her official residence.

Consistently more popular than her party, opposition attacks on her government’s spending record put her on the defensive during the campaign. Her four coalition partners also lost significant support in the election, making Finland’s all-female lead alliance unlikely to return to power.

With turnout steady at 72 per cent, Finnish voters appear to have disregarded Ms Marin’s call on Sunday to re-elect her party as a guarantor for a more “social” Finland.

Instead they have backed the NCP’s promise to to cut welfare spending and public debt, running at 70 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Ms Purra’s calls for austerity measures give her some overlap with the NCP, though her demands to reduce “harmful” immigration from non-EU countries drew attacks from the outgoing coalition.

Ms Marin said her SDP will not co-operate with the “racist” Finns Party, as did two other coalition partners.

After weathering domestic scandals – over photo shoots, living expenses and legislation for the indigenous Sámi – a newspaper survey last December found that 64 per cent of Finns thought Ms Marin had done a “very good” or a “fairly good” job as prime minister.

Above all Ms Marin earned kudos for her steady political leadership through the Covid-19 pandemic and rapid response to the Ukraine crisis, applying to join Nato after a dramatic swing in popular support in Finland.

After Turkey’s backing last week, official accession to join the alliance is likely to be completed within days.