Left Alliance VAS achieved a historic victory driven by its highly popular top candidate Li Andersson. Right-wing populist party The Finns, which governs Finland in coalition, saw its vote share reduced by half.
Source: Verian for the European Parliament
https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/national-results/finland/2024-2029/
The Winners and the Losers
Left Alliance VAS (Vasemmistoliitto/Vänsterförbundet, member of the Left group in the European Parliament) achieved a historic victory in the European Parliament elections in Finland. The party indeed secured 17.3% of votes resulting in three Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). This marks a significant increase from the 2019 EU elections, with a rise of 10.5 percentage points in support and an additional two MEPs. It also reflects a substantial gain compared to the 2023 parliamentary elections, with a rise of 10.2 percentage points. Left Alliance has never got such high support since the foundation of the party in 1990, while its processor, the Democratic League for Finnish People, garnered 17.9% in parliamentary elections 45 years ago in 1979.
Despite the low voter turnout, the number of votes was also the highest the Left Alliance has ever gotten. The party got 316,859 votes which is more than in local elections of 1992 when Left Alliance got 310,757 votes.
The result was a big surprise for everybody at Left Alliance although the popularity of the outgoing party chairperson and new MEP Li Andersson was visible already before election day. Opinion polls had predicted a maximum of two MEPs for the party, with just over 10% of votes. As the early vote results were published, at 20:00 on Sunday evening, the faces of Left Alliance party leaders and activists expressed astonishment. Early vote has become popular and represents already over 50% of all votes, so the result given at 8 pm is already rather representative.
Another winner is the Coalition party (EPP) which remains the largest party as it has been in every EU election since 1999. EPP even increased its share of votes to 24.8% (20.8% in 2019) and got four MEPs (+1).
The losers were clearly the Greens, who lost one MEP they had gained after Brexit, with 11.3% of votes (16.0% in 2019) but also the right-wing populist party The Finns (ECR), which lost almost half of its former votes and got only 7.6% of votes (13.8% in 2019), securing only one MEP (-1). This decline of the Finns Party is likely due to its participation in the government and the severe budget cuts promoted by party leader and Minister of Finance Riikka Purra. Most voters for The Finns apparently did not switch their allegiance to other parties but rather abstained from voting.
The turnout was slightly lower at 40.2% compared to 40.8% in 2019. The lowest turnout rates were observed in rural regions while the highest turnouts were recorded in prosperous areas of big cities.
The election results were a big disappointment also for the Social Democrats who only increased their share of votes to 14.9% (+0.2) and retained their two existing seats although the opinion polls had suggested they would this time secure three MEPs.
Centre Party and Swedish People’s Party (both Renew Europe group) got rather good results in line with the former 2019 elections: The Centre Party preserved its two MEPs and the Swedish People’s Party one MEP. Other smaller parties remain without representation in the European Parliament. Among them, the Finnish Communist Party got 0.2% of votes which is consistent with their performance in the 2019 elections.
The Reasons Behind the Victory of the Left
The clearest reason behind the Left Alliance victory is the popularity of its main candidate and outgoing party chairperson Li Andersson. Li Andersson herself got 78% of Left Alliance votes and she was the most popular candidate in European elections ever. Li Andersson’s 247,723 personal votes is clearly the highest amount among all candidates, re-elected MEP Eero Heinäluoma (SDP) and a former independent presidential candidate Mika Aaltola (Coalition party, EPP) got less than 100,000 votes. In her city of Turku, in Southwestern Finland, Li Andersson got 23.0% of all votes and Left Alliance became the largest party.
Li Andersson is the most popular party chairperson in Finland and praised for her competence on political issues even by political opponents. With Li Andersson there will be two other Left Alliance MEPs, namely Merja Kyllönen (who was already MEP in the 2014-2019 legislature) and Jussi Saramo (who was the chairperson of the Left Alliance parliamentary group). All three were members of the Finnish parliament and will be replaced by deputy MPs. Merja Kyllönen comes from Suomussalmi, in the Oulu district close to the Russian border in Northern Finland. Jussi Saramo lives in Vantaa, in the capital area. Merja Kyllönen got 27,072 votes and Jussi Saramo a mere 4,918 votes. Gashaw Bibani, of Kurdish origin, will become deputy MEP after receiving 4,644 votes.
A structural explanation of the Left Alliance success is that the voters of both the Social Democrats and the Greens have increasingly started to see Left Alliance as one possible, even likely, party choice. According to opinion polls, over 60% of social-democrat and green voters could also vote for the Left Alliance, the same is true also for the voters of Left Alliance in relation to social democrats and Greens. This behaviour of voters favoured Left Alliance this time mostly because the social democrats and the Greens lacked a visible and credible left-wing, green, liberal candidate (preferably a woman and not too old). As a voter in Finland needs to choose a candidate and not just a party, the lack of appealing candidates may lead to voting for a different party if it presents better ones. This favoured the Left Alliance in these elections.
Geographically, Left Alliance strengthened its position in large cities with universities. In the five largest university cities of the country, the Left Alliance increased its share of votes from 10.3% to 23.4%, while the social democrats garnered only 12.9% of the votes in those cities.
More moderate results could be observed in smaller industrial towns and in the traditional stronghold of the Left alliance in the North. In Lapland, excluding the city of Rovaniemi, the Left Alliance got 20.6% compared to 12.0% in 2019. In the city of Rovaniemi itself, their support increased from 7.1% to 20.2%.
According to opinion polls, security and the support for Ukraine were the most important topics in these elections. For supporters of the Left Alliance, the issues deemed as the “most important” were security and foreign policy, followed by environmental protection, circular economy and green transition, the strengthening of democracy and social policy.
Left Alliance had accepted Finland’s membership in NATO, with most of its MPs voting in favour of the membership in 2022. Although a significant minority of members and supporters oppose NATO, this issue did not prevent voting for the Left Alliance. Moreover, according to one opinion poll, Left Alliance supporters were more willing than the average population to “send soldiers to Ukraine in case Ukraine may lose the war”, as many as 58% of Left Alliance supporters had this opinion. The Left Alliance was also the clearest opponent to the war in Gaza among larger parties.
The mainstream media had also focused on the views of some MEPs of the Left group regarding the war in Ukraine, which were seen as supportive to the Russian narrative and against military assistance to Ukraine. This was discussed also inside the Left Alliance. However, this issue did not become dominant and was also rejected by the party chairperson given that the groups in European parliament do not follow group discipline but can rather vote as they prefer.
Left Alliance became the second-largest party for the first time since the 1970s, and it got more votes than social democrats for the second time in six months. The first time was in the first round of the presidential election in January 2024. However, the rapid moving of voters across parties of the Left and Green spectrum does not guarantee that this trend will continue. In any case, this result offers a good start for the campaign for the municipal and county elections which will take place in April 2025. The Left Alliance also needs to elect a new party chairperson. Normally, the chairperson is elected by the party congress, but since the next party congress will not take place until 2025, the party council will elect the new chairperson in October. Before that, Left Alliance will organise a referendum among its members for the party chairperson in September, and candidates for this referendum need to register before the end of August.
The election result may cause problems for the right-wing government, despite the government parties securing six MEPs, the same as as in 2019, and 42.7% of votes in total. The Coalition Party, which is the party of the prime minister, increased its support, while the Finns Party experienced its worst result in 15 years. This outcome may increase conflicts between the government parties.
Cover photo: A VAS campaign poster for the European election 2024 with top candidate Li Andersson in the centre. The slogan reads: “A fair Europe for all, not for the few”. Source: Left Alliance VAS Website.
