Yle’s European Parliament voter barometer shows the National Coalition taking a clear lead over other political parties in terms of voter approval. Pollster Taloustutkimus found that 22.7 percent of voters said they would support the lead government partner.
The Centre and Finns parties trailed the National Coalition, amassing 17.6 and 17.1 percent voter backing respectively.
Altogether support for the three leading parties declined slightly from a previous poll conducted in March. The comparison shows 1.1 percent point of voters backing off from the National Coalition, while the corresponding slip for the Centre and Finns parties was 0.5 and 0.7 percentage points respectively.
SDP falls; Left Alliance rises
The poll's biggest loser in May turned out to be the Social Democratic Party, which claimed fourth place in voter intentions with 13.8 percent backing, a slippage of 2.5 percentage points from back in March.
Much occurred in the interval between the two polls: at the end of March government unveiled its draft austerity budget and the race for a new Social Democratic chair brought a fresh face on the scene. Yle noted that some of the interviews were conducted on the heels of the change in SDP leadership.
Contrasting the SDP’s decline, all of the smaller political parties enjoyed a slight rise in popularity among voters. The Greens rounded off their voter appeal to 10 percent off a 0.3 percentage point increase, while the Left Alliance and Christian Democrats also saw their approval rating grow slightly to 8.4 percent and 4.4 percent. Support for the Swedish People’s Party crept up to 4.3 percent while the outsider parties in the Parliament (Left Alliance splinter group and Change 2011) enjoyed a tiny increase of 0.1 percentage point to register 1.7 percent approval.
The numbers suggest that the Left Alliance scored points with voters following its decision to leave the government over what it saw as a budget that placed a disproportionate burden on disadvantaged groups.
Four seats for National Coalition – sure place for the Left
Calculations based on the poll results suggest that the National Coalition will secure four seats in the European Parliament – compared to three in the last election. The Centre Party would bag three MEP positions, while the Finns Party and Social Democrats would each seat two MEPs. Voters would choose to send just one Green and one Left Alliance candidate each to Brussels.
Researchers were most guarded about the prospect of the Centre’s third European Parliament seat and the National Coalition’s fourth MEP. The numbers showed a toss up between these seats and a second seat for the Left and the Swedish People’s Party first Europarliament posting.
According to the results it seems likely that the SPP would get its first seat, based on the exclusion of the autonomous Swedish-speaking Åland Islands from the poll, a territory which has traditionally yielded 1,000 votes for the SPP.
Taloustutkimus interviewed just over 2,400 voters between May 5 and 20 for the poll. The margin of error is 1.8 percentage points either way.