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Antti Rinne

SDP's popularity crumbling: Youth, women and well-educated the prime deserters

The Social Democrats have their work cut out if the party is to reverse eroding levels of support before the next election. According to Yle polls the party’s popularity has largely been crumbling for the last two years.

Grafiikkaa.
Image: Yle

In May the Social Democratic Party (SDP) found itself eating the dust of the three major parties to the tune of 4-5 percentage points.

Newly minted SDP leader Antti Rinne has promised he will reverse the decline and return the party to the big league. In effect, he’s seeking to succeed where the previous head, Jutta Urpilainen, failed – combining party leadership with the functions of Finance Minister.

In the first few weeks after Antti Rinne’s election victory, the goal is looking ever more distant. Support for the SDP is at a meager 15 percent.

Antti Rinne
The new leader of the SDP, Antti Rinne, says he'll boost the party's flagging popularity. Image: Yle

Numbers were about the same last August, back when Jutta Urpilainen had said that miserable economic figures were a wake-up call demanding essential structural reforms.

Antti Rinne promised in his leadership campaign to turn back unpopular government cost-cutting decisions. Since then, opinions have softened.

From main threat to underdog

Support for the Social Democratic Party was at its peak in June 2012, when the figures showed 20.8 percent public backing. The gap between the SDP and the front runner at the time, the National Coalition Party, was only 0.8 percent.

However, the party's popularity has been trickling away since then. Since last autumn, popular support has varied from between 15 to 17 percent.

The state’s economic research institution, Taloustutkimus, sheds more light than the figures alone.

“In particular, already weak support amongst young people has declined even further,” says research director Jari Pajunen.

Middle class departing, grey voters signing up

It’s not just the young who are deserting the party, the ranks of the discontented are populated by the under 35s, highly educated people, women and high-income city-dwellers – in other words, the very same middle class that the previous party leadership sought to influence. It’s the votes of this demographic that the parties are fighting over.

Bucking the trend and joining the ranks of the SDP are the over 65s. The share of greying voters fleshing out party numbers has shot up, to comprise 10 percent of the party’s fan-base. This makes the Social Democrats the second most popular party for retirees, with only the Centre Party claiming a greater compositional share of senior voters.