Helsingin Sanomat points to the SDP campaign slogan as encapsulating its appeal to voters in Sunday's municipal and county council elections: "Everything can be done more fairly".
The paper writes that before the elections, many National Coalition Party members admitted off the record that the Social Democrats' slogan was annoyingly good.
This, says HS, is because it carried a double message. Many citizens are indignant about the government's cuts — and these same voters are also worried about public debt.
The SDP slogan can be interpreted as saying that the party would be willing to make savings, but pledges to do so more fairly than the government lead by Petteri Orpo (NCP).
Overall, the municipal and regional elections were a setback for the governing parties. The decline is mainly due to the Finns Party, which saw its voter support collapse.
Although the SDP used the municipal and regional elections as a referendum on the government's policies, the elections will clearly have no direct influence on the government's actions.
However, there may be a lot of indirect impact, writes Helsingin Sanomat.
Sunday's weak result for the Finns Party is likely to increase unrest in the party's parliamentary group. The number of votes for many MPs in this election seems to have fallen significantly from the previous municipal elections, adding to concerns about the future. Many MPs have genuine concerns that they will be eliminated in the 2027 parliamentary elections.
Finns Party leader, Riikka Purra, may have her work cut out for her in coming months as she tries to keep her party in line.
Political commentator and former Centre Party secretary Jarmo Korhonen told Iltalehti that Sunday's results show that the current government coalition has no chance of continuing after the next parliamentary elections.
"This means in practice that the SDP is in the driver's seat and the question is what kind of coalition it wants. Under no circumstances will the NCP accept, for example, a left-wing party as a second partner in government," he said.
According to Korhonen, it is possible that Finland will see early parliamentary elections.
Double victory
Ilta-Sanomat writes that SDP chair Antti Lindtman was holding back tears of joy during a Sunday evening interview with the paper.
"And no wonder...Lindtman must have been not only overwhelmingly happy but also extremely relieved by the outcome of Sunday's elections," writes IS.
The first two elections of Lindtman's chairmanship — the presidential election and an EU election — did not go well for the SDP.
The pressure going into the municipal and regional elections was enormous, although Lindtman did not publicly admit this at any stage of the campaign.
If the SDP had finished in second place in either of the elections on Sunday, many party members would certainly have begun to question their leader.
Sunday's double victory guarantees that the SDP will go into the next parliamentary elections in spring 2027 under his leadership.
Blaming voters
"It was bad, really bad," was how Finns Party chair Riikka Purra began remarks to a gathering of party faithful on Sunday evening.
Purra promised her party colleagues that the reasons for the loss will be discussed internally and externally over the next few days and weeks.
One reason Purra immediately brought up is what Iltalehti called the "mantra repeated throughout the evening about supporters being active only in the parliamentary elections".
"The general lack of interest of supporters in non-parliamentary elections, the very difficult economic situation, responsibility in the government, the need to balance public finances even through difficult decisions, the difficulties of finding candidates," were all listed by Purra as causes for her party's poor showing.
She went on to point to what she saw as the opposition's success in harnessing discontent without presenting an alternative and blaming the government for the current economic malaise.
"The people always get what they want in elections. The fact it's now a red [left] wave is not good for Finland," Purra said.
For a weekly roundup of the top stories from Finland, as well as an Yle Areena tip, sign up for Yle's newsletter service with your Yle ID.
Spending cuts not decisive
Results for the governing parties in the municipal election were not noticeably affected either by cuts to night-time hospital services or to the general housing allowance, according to an analysis by the STT news agency in Savon Sanomat.
STT compared the results for the governing parties in this and the previous elections to see where the government's decision to cut the general housing allowance have had the greatest impact and also where cuts have been made to the hospital network.
A statistical regression analysis of the election results showed that neither of the two issues examined explained local election results in different regions. Thus, support for government coalition parties rose or fell regardless of how much the amount of housing benefit paid had changed or whether the local night-time hospital services had been reduced.
The only exception is that the NCP's support in regional elections increased somewhat in areas where the general housing allowance had been cut by a large amount. For example, in the welfare county of Central Ostrobothnia, the NCP improved its election result the most, and the general housing allowance paid there has been decreased the second most in Finland. Similarly, in the welfare regions of Pirkanmaa, Western Uusimaa and Southwest Finland, cuts to the subsidy had little impact.
Overall, no significant statistical correlation was found between these cuts in spending on social services and the election result.
Helsinki mayoral race no done deal
In two of Finland's three largest cities, the job of mayor will now shift from the control of the National Coalition Party to the SDP.
In Turku, current deputy mayor Piia Elo (SDP) will take over the city's top administrative post.
The SDP also pulled ahead of the NCP in Tampere, where the gap between the parties widened to four percentage points. The SDP mayoral candidate Ilmari Nurminen was Tampere's biggest winner in Sunday's vote.
Most media outlets declared the NCP's mayoral candidate Daniel Sazonov the victor in Helsinki, but Helsingin Sanomat writes that it is not necessarily a sure thing.
Both the NCP and SDP ended up with 21 seats on the Helsinki city council, with the National Coalition Party winning the most support with 23.9 percent of the vote.
The parties in Helsinki have agreed that the mayor will be elected from the "largest party" after the elections.
However, the way it is determined which party is the biggest is unclear. In practice, it means that the successful candidate will need support from a majority of the council.
The SDP and the Left Alliance increased their council seats by 12 and their combined support by 13.7 percentage points.
Together with the Greens, the three would have a clear majority in the council.
This opens the door for Eveliina Heinäluoma's (SDP) ambitions if her party wants to mount a challenge.
The decision will ultimately be made in post-election negotiations between the party groupings.
Users with an Yle ID can leave comments on our news stories. You can create your Yle ID via this link. Our guidelines on commenting and moderation are explained here.