YLE forecasts that the National Coalition Party (NCP) will be the winner of the 2017 municipal elections with 20.4% of the votes followed by the Social Democrats (19.2%) and Center Party (17.6%). The biggest winner will be the Greens (13.6%) and the biggest loser the Perussuomalaiset* (8.2%).
The PS saw their support nosedive from the last municipal elections (12.3%) and especially from the parliamentary elections, when the got 17.7% of the votes.
For migrants, minorities and sensible Finns, the poor showing of the PS is the best news since the 2011 parliamentary elections, when the populist party won 19.05% of the votes versus 4.05% in 2007.
* The official translation to Finnish of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party is the Finns Party. In our opinion, it is not only a horrible translation, but one that is misguided. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Such terms like the Finns Party of True Finns promote as well in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and thereafter the acronym PS.