Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) has become Finland’s most popular political party, according to a survey published by the leading daily Helsingin Sanomat on Saturday.
The poll suggests that if a parliamentary election was held now, the SDP would gain 20.4 percent of the vote. That represents a leap of 3.3 percentage points in the party’s backing since the previous HS poll, a month ago.
The main opposition Finns Party, which has led public opinion polls for about a year, was virtually neck-and-neck with the PM’s party at 20.2 percent support.
That is in line with an Yle poll published just over a week ago.
The nationalist party’s support slipped by 1.4 percentage points in a month – well within the margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.
Besides the SDP, the Centre was the only government party to gain support. The Centre, led by Minister Finance Katri Kulmuni, moved past government partners the Greens into fourth place. Centre support stood at 12.6 percent and the Greens at 11.2 percent.
Ahead of both was the second-largest opposition party, the conservative National Coalition Party, with 16.8 percent backing.
The other parties all had single-digit ratings.
Altogether the quintet of parties in Marin’s centre-left coalition government had 55.8 percent support, up from 52.5 percent a month earlier.
The government coalition has in effect been in office since last summer, but Marin replaced fellow SDP politician Antti Rinne as premier in December amid a cabinet reshuffle.
Pollster Kantar TNS interviewed 2,360 voting-age people between 16 March and 15 April.