Marin’s party was narrowly defeated by its conservative and far-right rivals, who came third in the election.
After all of Sunday’s votes were counted, the right-wing National Coalition Party (NCP) won 20.8 percent of the vote, and the populist nation-first party Finns won 20.1 percent. Marin’s SDP got 19.9% of the vote. The turnout was 71.9%.
Marin congratulated the election winners during his concession speech, but welcomed an improvement in both his party’s vote share and expected number of MPs. “It’s a very good achievement, even if we didn’t finish first today,” she told supporters in Helsinki. The Guardian.
“Democracy has had its say, the Finnish people have voted, and celebrating democracy is always a wonderful thing,” she added. “We have good reason to be happy with this result.”
NCP leader Petteri Orpo told public broadcaster Yle that the result was a “great victory … a strong mandate for our policies”, adding that his party would lead the coalition negotiations. The Finns’ leader, Riikka Purra, said it was “an excellent result”.
Orpo, a 53-year-old former finance minister, said the Nordic country’s solidarity with Kiev would remain strong during his tenure. “And the message to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is: get out of Ukraine, because you will lose,” Orpo said.
Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, cleared the final hurdles to becoming a NATO member earlier this week as alliance members Turkey and Hungary signed the country’s application.
Before the election, political described Sanna Marin as “one of the stars of the European left” but with little chance of winning a majority to govern, including with her coalition, for the next four years. The biggest problem, invoked by the opposition, is the increase in public debt, which reached from 68.7% of GDP in the third quarter of 2021, to 70.9% in the third quarter of 2022, determined by loans to finance social assistance and state during the pandemic and economic crisis.
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