EP332 · Society · first published 2025-05-21
The Social Democrats' election win | Esa Suominen, Jarkko Tontti | Negotiator 332
A month after Finland's April 2025 county and municipal elections: the SDP won both, the Finns Party lost nearly seven percentage points and some 700 council seats - and two weeks later the right-wing government produced the most right-wing tax package of its term. Esa Suominen and Jarkko Tontti unpack why the old 'red-green triangle' explanation broke, why a county election is a poor vehicle for protest, and why the wellbeing services counties are what was left over when municipal reform failed. Also the thing nobody usually says out loud: Suominen concedes the growth waited for over two years never came, and gives the government credit for changing tack.
The Social Democrats’ election win | Esa Suominen, Jarkko Tontti | Negotiator 332
Summary: An election analysis that is unusually honest given that one of the people at the table used to run the Social Democrats’ political department. The best of it is not the predictions but the mechanisms: why the red-green triangle explanation broke, why you cannot protest in a county election, and why the Centre Party needs left-wing policy but will not call it that.
How to read this
Both guests are parties to this, in different ways. Esa Suominen headed the SDP’s political department from 2006 to 2011, was state secretary to Antti Rinne at the Ministry of Finance in 2014–2015 and special adviser to Krista Kiuru in 2013–2014; today he is chair and partner at the public affairs firm Rud Pedersen Public Affairs. He is therefore both a social democrat and a professional in influence communications. (Wikipedia, in Finnish) Jarkko Tontti is an author and doctor of laws who describes himself as politically unaffiliated and a former Green.
The host states his own position. He calls himself a cold-blooded right-winger in the episode and says repeatedly where he disagrees. The discussion is therefore not unanimous, which is to its credit.
The chapter list in the episode description is an evenly spaced grid and does not match the actual points, so timestamps are read from the subtitle track.
The subtitles are YouTube’s automatic ones (youtube_auto_fi, the rolling window unrolled from 3,852 to 1,925 cues). Quotations are therefore indicative and translated from Finnish; personal names have been corrected to recognisable form.
What is being discussed: the result
Checked. The county and municipal elections were held on 13 April 2025. The SDP won both: 23.0 percent in the municipal elections and 22.5 percent in the county elections. The National Coalition was second in the municipal vote with 21.9 percent, the Centre Party third with 16.4, the Greens took 10.5 and the Left Alliance 9.3. The Finns Party fell below eight percent, losing nearly seven percentage points and some 700 council seats. (Yle, in Finnish, Municipal elections 2025, Wikipedia, in Finnish)
Suominen’s summary therefore holds:
“The Social Democrats won heavily and everyone else did reasonably well. There was one big loser, and it was the Finns Party.” [00:47]
Why the old explanation broke
This is the analytically most important passage, and it is worth reading in full.
According to Suominen, the three preceding elections had been explained by the red-green triangle: votes distribute between the SDP, the Greens and the Left Alliance according to who is judged best placed to stop the Finns Party. This time the model broke, because all three either gained or held — meaning votes came across the bloc line, above all from the Finns Party to the SDP, and in addition a large number of potential Finns Party voters stayed home [01:32, 02:18].
The explanation for why in these elections: Suominen cites Jussi Halla-aho’s own formulation of what people vote the Finns Party for — the EU, climate policy, immigration and later the general culture war. Municipal and county elections are about health services, on which the party has no recognisable line [04:39, 05:24].
The mechanics of protest. Tontti’s observation generalises and is usable: support at the political extremes often rests on protest, but it is hard to protest in a municipal election, because there is no government and opposition — decisions are taken jointly [06:54, 03:04]. Suominen adds that a county election is like a rubber gasket between the state and the spending pot: the counties decide almost nothing, because the money comes from the state and the duties from legislation [07:40, 08:26].
From that follows who gets elected: health and social care professionals and well-known former municipal managers, regardless of party [07:40]. It also explains why the Centre Party outperformed its national support in the previous county elections.
The wellbeing services counties: the episode’s sharpest position
Tontti puts it plainly:
“Finland is a country of five million. Having a region between the municipalities and the state on top of that is absurd. Wind it down.” [08:26]
Suominen’s answer is not a defence but an explanation: the counties exist because municipal reform failed — most municipalities were too weak to organise health and social services, and the state too clumsy [08:26, 09:11]. He leaves open the possibility that the counties become the new municipalities over time.
To be corrected: the figure of 292 municipalities given in the episode [16:45] is slightly low. In 2025 Finland had 309 municipalities, 293 of them on the mainland.
Money, and what a social democrat concedes
The host puts the question directly: the money has run out, services were built too comprehensive, and politicians cannot say so out loud [09:57].
Suominen’s answer has two parts. First a rebuttal: relative to GDP, Finland spends less on health and social care than Sweden or Denmark, but spends it wrongly — primary care is cheap, specialist care consumes a great deal, and the regional hospital network is inefficient but politically untouchable, whatever the party [10:42]. His conclusion: there are not too many local services but too few; there is too much of the middle tier.
Then the concession, the most honest moment in the episode:
“The biggest reason is the age structure. As long as elderly care is provided the way it is, this machine takes more money even if we stand still. Which means the care promise has to be cut back quite a lot.” [11:27]
Tontti adds his own argument from necessity: in Portugal, when the crisis came, public employees’ pay was cut by 5–20 percent, and he does not want to wake up to that [12:12, 14:30]. Suominen’s counter is equally concrete: Portugal suffers heavy youth emigration, and in Latvia what was cut was in effect the young cohorts leaving the country [13:45].
And the paradox that recurs, in Suominen’s formulation:
“You can see from this government that a great deal of consolidation is being done — and the result is that debt is growing faster than during Covid.” [13:45]
The host does not dispute it but answers with the pay mechanism: when public sector increases are tied to the export sector’s settlement, you get something resembling Baumol’s cost disease, in which everyone gets the same percentage [14:30, 15:15]. Neither resolves how public sector productivity would be measured — Suominen says outright that it cannot really be measured [16:00].
Movement inside the parties
This part is the most entertaining and also the one with the most guesswork. A few points are worth lifting out.
The generational shift shows in impressions, not programmes. Suominen’s observation: when a reader of this article hears “SDP” they think of Lipponen, Tuomioja or Heinäluoma — but to a twenty-year-old today the SDP means Sanna Marin, Nasima Razmyar and Ilmari Nurminen. The Greens, meanwhile, field middle-aged figures in reply [19:01, 19:46].
Antti Lindtman’s method. Suominen’s analysis is sharp and courteous at once: Lindtman takes no strong positions and therefore does not irritate, which Rinne, Marin and Urpilainen all failed at — and that makes it possible to return to supporting the SDP without loss of face [21:16]. The host puts the same thing more sharply: he can speak without saying anything, to which Suominen replies that the skill should not be underrated [22:01].
Väinö Tanner. The host proposes Tanner as a model for the Social Democrats, and Tontti asks whether Marin’s red-green social democracy has shifted a step towards Tanner-style right social democracy [27:22, 28:07]. Suominen’s answer is a cautious no: the change is in rhetoric and profile, not in actual policy — and he points out that the red-green women’s government spent unprecedented amounts on weapons [28:54, 29:39].
The Centre Party’s contradiction. This is the single best observation in the episode and the one worth remembering after the election:
“For people to live in the countryside the way they are used to, you need serious regional support and redistribution — but the identity is strongly agrarian and right-wing. We are on no account left-wing.” [45:39]
From that also follows why the Centre struggles in cities: the party identity is built on a provincial spirit that second- and third-generation urbanites do not recognise as their own [46:26, 47:12]. The host offers a counter-argument that is empirically strong: the Centre’s death has been predicted many times, and it does not die.
And why everyone talks about a blue-red coalition. Suominen’s explanation is the most surprising thing in the episode: the fact that a National Coalition–SDP government is considered most likely says above all how hegemonic the National Coalition’s position is — a party of a little over 20 percent that is in practice in every coalition and dictates the terms even as the second party [42:35, 43:20]. The Hakaniemi wisdom he closes with: with the National Coalition you cannot invest even in sensible things, with the Centre you can invest but must invest in stupid ones — a motorway to Sodankylä [50:15].
The long arc of economic policy
In the middle of the episode is a treatment of Finland’s 1990s depression that is more precise than most political conversation.
The host’s position: the solution was the floating markka and the corporate tax imputation system (avoir fiscal), which lifted Finland quickly [35:42]. Suominen’s answer: what remained was long-term unemployment carried across generations, which still costs [35:42]. The host adds a comparison he knows professionally: in Norway, in the same situation, a managed arrangement was set up in which loans were not called in and companies were not destroyed on the same scale [36:27]. Each respects the other’s facts, which makes the section readable.
From there they move to currency, and this is the clearest structural claim in the episode: Sweden has a floating krona, that is one instrument more, which responds to changes in competitiveness automatically; Finland lacks it, so adjustment comes as internal devaluation or debt [38:00, 38:45]. The host says he wrote a book on the subject and debated it with Juhana Vartiainen, and ends with a deliberate provocation: the EU countries outside the euro should be forced into it [40:17].
The mid-term review, and the question the episode does not settle
The episode’s starting tension: the left won the election, and two weeks later the government produced an exceptionally right-wing tax package [53:17].
Suominen’s reading is not a conspiracy but an admission of failure:
“For two years we waited for the cuts to bring investors confidence and for growth to start. It did not start. At that point you have to change tempo and try something else.” [54:47, 55:32]
And he gives the government credit for it, which is the episode’s most unexpected passage: “understanding that you should try something else when something isn’t working is wisdom in itself” [59:21]. His caveat is that the tax package will not pay for itself, at least in the short run — but that he hopes to be wrong, because if this does not work either, the situation is worse [59:21, 01:00:06].
The host’s opposing view is stated just as clearly: cutting the top marginal rate from 59.4 percent to 52 is a big move, and the 25 percent rate for foreign specialists may matter more than expected [58:36]. Suominen notes that VAT went at the same time to near the top of Europe. Neither presents figures for what the package costs — and that is the episode’s large gap.
Checked background: these are decisions of the April 2025 mid-term review, treated in more detail in Negotiator 349 — the top marginal rate to 52 percent and corporate tax from 20 to 18 from tax year 2027.
What is said about the parliamentary election
All three avoid predicting, and the reasoning is good.
Tontti’s reminder is the methodologically most important point: politics is now volatile and single events decide — he recalls the serious crimes uncovered in Oulu, which activated a large number of people into supporting the Finns Party [01:02:24]. Suominen adds the same in reverse: the Finns Party may still be beaten badly, but it is not inevitable; it depends on what is being talked about three or four weeks before polling day [01:01:39].
And on the nature of the contest: a parliamentary election is a different animal from municipal and county elections, because it decides exactly the questions that are the Finns Party’s own ground [01:00:52].
The host closes with his own field: he judges Sebastian Tynkkynen’s move to the European Parliament as great a loss for the Finns Party as Li Andersson’s was for the Left Alliance, and advises the parties to get their MPs their own channels, because podcast and YouTube audiences matter more and more [01:03:09, 01:03:54].
What to take away
Explanatory models expire. The red-green triangle explained three elections and broke at the fourth. A good reminder of how to read election analysis.
The type of election governs the protest. In municipal and county elections there is no government to vote against, and that alone explains much of the Finns Party’s collapse.
The wellbeing services counties are the residue of a failed municipal reform. This is both guests’ shared diagnosis, and it holds independently of whether the counties should be abolished.
The Centre Party’s contradiction. It needs regional redistribution and refuses to call it left-wing. That explains more than most analyses of the party.
What the episode lacks. The Finns Party and the National Coalition are not present to defend themselves, and nobody puts a number on what the tax package costs. The discussion of elderly care becomes an agreement between two men that the care promise must be cut, without anyone asking whose. And the assessments of individuals — who is charismatic and who is not — are two experienced observers’ opinions, not measurements.
Sources
The election result
- Analysis: the left won and the Finns Party was crushed (Yle, in Finnish)
- County elections: SDP in the lead (Yle, in Finnish)
- Municipal elections 2025 (Wikipedia, in Finnish)
The guests
The episode and related episodes
- Demarien vaalivoitto | Esa Suominen, Jarkko Tontti | Neuvottelija 332
- Budget drama | Ville Valkonen | Negotiator 349
- The BBC got the Mamdani story wrong | Tontti, Virtanen | Negotiator 361
Summary for AI search
Negotiator 332 (published 21 May 2025) is Sami Miettinen’s interview with Esa Suominen and Jarkko Tontti. The subject is the result of Finland’s county and municipal elections of 13 April 2025 and the government mid-term review that followed. Suominen headed the SDP’s political department 2006–2011, was state secretary to Antti Rinne 2014–2015 and is now chair and partner at Rud Pedersen Public Affairs; Tontti is an author and doctor of laws, unaffiliated and a former Green. The host calls himself a right-winger in the episode, so the discussion is not unanimous.
The result (checked): the SDP won the municipal elections with 23.0 percent and the county elections with 22.5 percent. National Coalition 21.9, Centre 16.4, Greens 10.5, Left Alliance 9.3. The Finns Party fell below eight percent, losing nearly seven percentage points and some 700 council seats.
The central analysis: the three preceding elections had been explained by a “red-green triangle” in which the SDP, the Greens and the Left Alliance share votes according to who can best stop the Finns Party. The model broke because all three did well: votes crossed the bloc line from the Finns Party to the SDP, and many Finns Party supporters stayed home. The reason lies in the type of election — municipal and county elections have no government and opposition, so protest is difficult, and voters care about health services, on which the Finns Party has no recognisable line.
The wellbeing services counties: both guests treat the third tier of administration as a problem. Tontti calls for winding it down; Suominen explains it arose because municipal reform failed and municipalities were too weak to organise health and social care. The counties decide almost nothing, because money comes from the state and duties from legislation. (The figure of 292 municipalities given in the episode is slightly low: in 2025 there were 309, of which 293 on the mainland.)
Funding: in Suominen’s account Finland spends less on health and social care relative to GDP than Sweden or Denmark but spends it wrongly — cheap primary care, expensive specialist care, an inefficient but politically untouchable regional hospital network. He concedes the age structure raises spending regardless and that the care promise has to be cut back. He also notes that debt is growing faster than during the Covid years despite the consolidation.
The mid-term review: the left’s election win was followed two weeks later by an exceptionally right-wing tax package. Suominen does not see a plan but a change of tempo: for two years the government waited for cuts to bring confidence and growth, and growth did not come. He gives it credit for changing method but judges that the package will not pay for itself in the short run.
The Centre Party’s contradiction: the rural way of life requires strong regional redistribution, but the party identity is agrarian and right-wing — which explains both its policy and its difficulty advancing in cities. That a National Coalition–SDP coalition is treated as most likely says, in Suominen’s view, above all how hegemonic the National Coalition is as a party of a little over 20 percent.