With the National Coalition and Finns Party both also recording modest up-ticks in support – the former from 21.2 to 21.6 per cent and the latter from 15.3 to 15.9 per cent – the power balance between the three largest parties remains unchanged.

Tuomo Turja, the research director at Taloustutkimus, reminded the public broadcasting company that the results are very typical for a summer poll.

“All the results fall within the margin of error. The three top parties have increased their popularity slightly, but they’ve stayed at the same level as previously,” he summarised.

He did, though, draw particular attention to the approval rating of the Social Democrats, which had been losing female voters to the Left Alliance.

“Support for the Let Alliance is still pretty high among women, but not quite as high as it was in the previous poll. As for the Social Democrats, its popularity among women has increased moderately,” he said.

A week-to-week analysis of the polling data shows that voters did react to parliament passing the long-berated border security act, which grants the government, in consultation with the president, the licence to suspend the reception of asylum applications and deny asylum seekers the right to appeal against the denial of entry.

The government devised the act as a tool to combat instrumentalised immigration from Russia.

Turja told YLE that the Social Democrats had clearly its worst week of the polling period the week after the vote, on 12 July. The opposition party backed the bill except for a handful of lawmakers, despite the criticism it had drawn from a large number of experts in constitutional law, administrative law, international law and human rights.

The Green League, by contrast, had its two best weeks of the polling period after its members voted without exception against the act. The opposition party saw its popularity rise by 0.6 points to 8.9 per cent. Also the Left Alliance voted against the bill, but it saw its popularity fall by 0.7 points to 10.9 per cent.

Both of the opposition parties have made gains after disappointing in the parliamentary elections in 2023. The Left Alliance has gained 3.8 points and the Green League 1.9 per cent when compared with the election results.

The two weeks following the vote were also good for the Finns Party and National Coalition, according to Turja.

While the National Coalition and Social Democrats are currently polling roughly at the level of the 2023 parliamentary elections, the Finns Party would see its vote share drop by 4.2 points if the elections were held today.

Turja said the populist right-wing party is struggling particularly among blue-collar voters. The party had long been the most popular choice for blue-collar workers in both elections and polls, but it is presently tied among the voter group with the Social Democrats.

Another intriguing finding, he added, is that the Centre has not benefited from the decline of the Finns Party, despite the two parties vying for the same voters especially in rural regions. Support for the Centre continued to hover around the 12-per-cent mark, decreasing by 0.3 points to 11.9 per cent from the previous poll.

The Christian Democrats and Swedish People’s Party are almost neck and neck after the former stood pat at 3.7 per cent and the latter slipped 0.3 points to 3.6 per cent. Turja said to YLE that the latter continues struggling to appeal to its core voters, even though the European elections in June demonstrated that the voters do turn out for elections.

“Out of the people who voted for the Swedish People’s Party in the European elections, a larger-than-normal share is saying they don’t know how they’d vote,” he said.

Support for Movement Now dropped by 0.9 points to 1.0 per cent.

The four-party ruling coalition had the support of 44.8 per cent of the poll respondents.

Taloustutkimus contacted altogether 2,497 people, receiving 1,827 responses, between 8 July and 6 August. The respondents were asked which party they would vote for if the parliamentary elections were organised now.

The poll results have a margin of error of 2.0 percentage points.

Aleksi Teivainen – HT