There’s an interesting editoral on Saturdary’s Helsingin Sanomat (HS) that shows how close Nordic anti-immigration are when it comes to the support they received in recent elections and poll standings. Migrant Tales wrote six days after Anders Breivik murdered in cold blood 77 people on July 22, 2011 that the tide had turned for far right anti-immigration parties in the Nordic region.
Writes HS: “In the last national elections of 2011, the Progress Party of Norway got 11.4% and the Danish People’s Party 12.3%. In the October municipal elections, the Perussuomalaiset received 12.3%. The amount of votes that the Sweden Democrats got in the parliamentary elections was 5.7%, but a number of polls show their support to be over 10%.”
Even if the Nordic region’s main anti-immigration parties took a beating in recent elections, they have shown, at least in Finland, their real face. Even if PS chairman Timo Soini continues to play down the role of the anti-immigration vote in the historic April 2011 election, the recent poor showing of the party in the presidential and municipal elections suggest that mainstream voters are ditching the party.
Some of the most loyal PS voters appear to be today those that vote for anti-immigration candidates. Is this one of the reasons why PS MP Jussi Halla-aho is planning to challenge Soini for the party’s leadership?
Those politicians that base their support on immigrant and visible minority bashing, need the PS as much as a human needs oxygen. Without the party they would shrivel up, become insignificant and die. A good example is former PS city councilman Hemmo Koskiniemi. When the Rovaniemi PS branch refused to accept his candidacy for city council, Koskiniemi’s votes plummeted to 74 from 337 in 2008.
Soini and these candidates feed off each other politically. One needs the other.
HS claims that in the face of the Sweden Democrats‘ racism scandal, Soini’s problems are small. Maybe so, but the plunge in PS support and the success of their strongly anti-immigration and Counterjihadist candidates in the municipal elections show that Soini may be in deep water soon.
Some good points, Enrique.