Yle’s monthly political barometer for August focused specifically on the upcoming local government election. As such the poll results cannot be compared to previous monthly surveys, which gauged political support for parliamentary elections.

According to the poll results, the National Coalition Party is heading into next month’s municipal election with the support of 22.7 percent of voters, compared to a final result of 23.5 percent in the last local election.

The party with the second largest support base in next month’s election is the other senior government partner the Social Democratic party with 18.7 percent of voter backing. The party received 21.2 percent of votes in the 2008 election.

The voter survey conducted by pollster Taloustutkimus showed that the Centre Party would receive the third largest proportion of votes at 16.6 percent, compared to 20.1 percent back in 2008.

Dizzying rise for Finns Party

In spite of the hold the established parties enjoy on voter mind share, the opposition nationalist Finns Party looks set to score the biggest upset of the election by surging to secure 15.8 percent of electorate support compared to just 5.4 percent four years ago.

A comparison of the results of the August poll with the final outcome in 2008 shows that the Social Democratic and Centre parties would be the biggest losers if the municipal election took place today.

Among the smaller parties, support for the Green League inched up to 9.4 percent from 8.9 percent in 2008, while backing for the Left Alliance slipped slightly from 8.8 percent in 2008 to 8.2 percent in August.

Some 4.3 percent of voters now support the Swedish People's Party compared to 4.7 percent in 2008, and the Christian Democrats also showed a small slide in popularity to 3.2 percent last month, down from 4.2 percent four years ago.