Two New Right-Wing MPs | Onni Rostila, Tere Sammallahti | Neuvottelija 187

A note on reading this

A short congratulatory episode in which two repeat guests of the channel discuss their own elections, recorded the day after the result. Both are acquaintances of the interviewer and regulars on the show. Government talk here is speculation, and claims about the channels’ influence on the outcome are the speakers’ own assessment rather than measurement.

Summary

Onni Rostila (Finns Party) and Tere Sammallahti (National Coalition), both just elected from Uusimaa, came on the day after Finland’s April 2023 result.

The arithmetic is what lasts. The National Coalition’s threshold for a seat in Uusimaa rose from about 3,400 votes in 2019 to 5,200 — because an unusually strong list spread its votes evenly. Sammallahti came tenth, fifty votes ahead of the previous term’s last entrant. Rostila was fifth on the Finns Party list and safe on advance votes, passing 5,000 as a first-time candidate. For scale, a previous guest of the show polled about 4,500 in Helsinki and was not elected.

Rostila’s sharpest point is about his own party. Riikka Purra topped the personal vote, but every sitting Finns Party MP in Uusimaa lost thousands of votes: a leader strong enough to dominate the debates pulls votes within the list as well as into the party. That is why he regards a first-timer’s 5,000 as a strong result in those conditions. Sammallahti describes the mirror image on his own side, where even distribution raised the threshold but yielded more seats.

Election night from the inside is the most practical passage: a contest with one candidate who pulls away, then the question of whether the party total reaches a tenth or eleventh seat, then the geography of timing — Vantaa and the surrounding municipalities are counted before Espoo, so the left’s lead looked larger than it was for hours.

On government, both hope for a right-wing coalition. Sammallahti’s criticism of the Centre is procedural, that its leader placed it in opposition before the parliamentary group had met. Rostila’s counterweight is strategic: a Centre in opposition opens the way to Coalition–Finns Party governments later without kingmaker parties, though on these numbers that would still need two more parties and a thin margin.

Both also note that the splinter parties formed out of the Finns Party won no seats, and agree on where votes remain available: movement between the Coalition and the Finns Party has largely happened already, and the Centre is where the ground still is.

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Oikeistokansanedustajat | Onni Rostila Tere Sammallahti | Neuvottelija 187. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.