--- title: "Two New Right-Wing MPs | Onni Rostila, Tere Sammallahti | Negotiator 187" summary: "Two newly elected MPs from Uusimaa the day after Finland's April 2023 result: Onni Rostila of the Finns Party and Tere Sammallahti of the National Coalition. A short episode whose most durable content is the electoral arithmetic of Finland's largest constituency — the National Coalition's threshold for a seat in Uusimaa rose from 3,400 votes to 5,200 in four years, and Riikka Purra's landslide personal vote took thousands of votes from her own party's sitting MPs. Both men built their campaigns on YouTube, and the episode is a practical account of what seat allocation looks like from the inside on election night. Published 8 April 2023." datePublished: 2023-04-08 dateModified: 2023-04-08 originalLang: en section: society sections: ["society"] authors: ["Sami Miettinen"] tags: ["Neuvottelija","EP187","Onni Rostila","Tere Sammallahti","Finnish election 2023","Finns Party","National Coalition Party","Uusimaa","Electoral arithmetic","Government formation"] canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep187-oikeistokansanedustajat-rostila-sammallahti/ --- # Two New Right-Wing MPs | Onni Rostila, Tere Sammallahti | Negotiator 187 # Two New Right-Wing MPs | Rostila, Sammallahti > **Summary:** > In episode 187 Sami Miettinen interviews two newly elected MPs, **Onni Rostila of the > Finns Party** and **Tere Sammallahti of the National Coalition**, the day after Finland's > April 2023 result. Published 8 April 2023. > > **A note on reading this.** This is a short congratulatory episode in which two repeat > guests of the channel discuss their own elections. Both are acquaintances of the > interviewer and regulars on the show, and the tone reflects that. The views are theirs, > the discussion of government is speculation the day after the vote, and the article takes > no position on who is right. --- ## The Uusimaa arithmetic, which is the episode's most durable content The campaign talk dates. The numbers do not. Sammallahti's figure is the hardest in the episode: **the National Coalition's threshold for a seat in Uusimaa was around 3,400 votes in 2019. This time it was 5,200.** He calls the list "the strongest Uusimaa National Coalition list of all time" — and because the votes spread more evenly across it than among competitors, the threshold rose. Sammallahti himself came in tenth on his party's list, fifty votes ahead of the candidate who had been last in the previous term. Rostila's position was different: fifth on the Finns Party list and effectively safe on the advance votes alone. > My position on my own list was good enough, and the margin in the proportional gap clear > enough, that I didn't have to worry about it much. Rostila passed 5,000 votes as a first-time candidate. **Miettinen offers a comparison that says more about competition in Uusimaa and Helsinki than any general comment:** his earlier guest Martin Paasi took about 4,500 votes in Helsinki and did not get in. Candidates polling over four thousand were left out. ## Why Purra's victory cost her own party's MPs This is the episode's sharpest single observation, and Rostila makes it himself about his own party. Riikka Purra topped the personal vote in Uusimaa and nationally. But: > In Uusimaa too, every sitting Finns Party MP lost thousands of votes. Of course when you > have a chairman this strong who performs that well in the debates, it pulls that way. A leader's personal triumph, in other words, is not free inside the party: it moves votes within the list rather than only bringing them in from outside. That is precisely why Rostila regards his own first-time result as strong — it was achieved in conditions where the rest of the list lost ground. Sammallahti describes the opposite dynamic on the National Coalition side: **more even distribution** of votes raised the threshold but produced more seats. ## Election night from the inside A practical account of what a candidate actually watches during the results broadcast — and it is more concrete than most election analysis. Sammallahti's night went like this: 1. First a contest with **Noora Fagerström**, who pulled away by a larger margin. 2. Then the calculation of whether the National Coalition's total would reach a tenth or an eleventh seat — which would settle it. 3. Then **the geography of timing**: Vantaa and the surrounding municipalities are counted faster than Espoo, so the left managed to stretch its lead in the interim, before Espoo's votes came in. 4. Once Vantaa was complete, the gap closed within moments. > When we realised the trend was not going to turn, we knew we were in. Rostila's equivalent experience lasted five minutes. Miettinen notes the **d'Hondt curve** had gone his way from the advance votes onwards. ## YouTube as a campaign tool Both candidates built their campaigns on social media and YouTube in particular, and Helsingin Sanomat ran a piece on this on election night itself. Miettinen groups them with the Finns Party's young social-media winners in Tampere, and notes self-deprecatingly that **every parliamentary candidate who had appeared on the Neuvottelija and Viisasteluklubi shows was elected.** His recommendation to viewers is direct: copy their playbook. The episode does not claim the channel decided the elections — no measurement of that relationship is offered, and it is the speakers' own assessment. ## Government speculation, one day out This section is a prisoner of its date, but it captures the situation. Both hope for a right-wing government. Sammallahti's criticism is aimed at the **Centre Party**, and it is procedural: Annika Saarikko placed the party in opposition before the parliamentary group had even met. He hopes the Centre returns to being a bourgeois party and judges it would carry relatively substantial weight in government given its result. Rostila's counterweight is strategic: **if the Centre goes into opposition with the left**, it opens the possibility of forming National Coalition–Finns Party governments later without kingmaker parties. On the present numbers that would still require the Christian Democrats and the Swedish People's Party, and the margin would be thin. Neither presents this as certain, and the episode was recorded before government negotiations began. ## Who lost their seats A short but notable passage, because both men also discuss their own parties' losses. Rostila raises **Olli Immonen's** defeat and regrets it — he describes Immonen as a long-standing figure and a sensible man, despite having been given a rough ride publicly. On **Ano Turtiainen** he understands a different reading, and both note the broader trend: **neither VKK nor Vapauden liitto succeeded** — the splinter parties that had broken from the Finns Party won no seats. Among other parties they note the defeats of Paavo Väyrynen, Antti Rinne and minister Sirpa Paatero. Sammallahti observes that **Antti Lindtman** took the personal-vote crown on the Social Democrat list and drew the oxygen away from Rinne's camp. ## Where votes are still available The most analytical point at the end, and Rostila makes it as strategy about his own party. In his view the Finns Party should target **AY-affiliated Social Democrats and the Centre** rather than the National Coalition, because movement between the Coalition and the Finns Party has largely already happened. Sammallahti concedes the same is true for his own party: plenty of Centre voters have moved across over the years, and there is more to be had there. Rostila's additional point is quantitative: had the shift from the Centre to the Finns Party been slightly stronger, **the party's seat count would have been close** to rising further still. Both also note that the Finns Party spent the campaign framing the National Coalition as the party that would form a blue-red government with the Social Democrats — Sammallahti calls this clever and watches the construction of narratives with an outsider's amusement. **Neither disputes the tactics**, regarding them as normal in an election contest. ## What stays with you Three things. **The threshold for a seat in Uusimaa rose by half in four years.** From 3,400 votes to 5,200 says more about competition in the largest constituency than any polling figure — and it explains why candidates with four thousand votes were left out. **A leader's landslide costs their own party's candidates.** Rostila's observation that every sitting Finns Party MP in Uusimaa lost thousands of votes while the party won is within-list arithmetic that usually drops out of election commentary altogether. **Election night is decided by the timetable of geography.** That Vantaa is counted before Espoo makes the results broadcast misleading for hours at a time — an observation that holds in every election and is the episode's most practical takeaway.