Oh the Finnish expertise

Open Europe disdainfully dismisses others

A lot has been said about the True Finns, with the European media all of a sudden forced to become experts on Finnish national politics - it has to be said with varying degrees of success. That many still refer to the True Finns as a "right wing" party indicates the need for a bit more analysis and a bit less reliance on labels that are flying around.

Of course they are one of the successful ones, after all a search shows that the slightly Eursceptic organisation first seems to note the existence of Timo Soini's True Finns  in a fleeting aside in a briefing about Portugal, then on the 4th April, where they describe the True Finns as running on a

"highly populist platform"

and has them straddled by Gert Wilders PVV and the Austrian FPO.

The next day after being slapped in the comments section they posted this, which does to be fair suggest that there has been some research going on, even a little more than a Wikipedia scan. And today they hold everyone else in disdain.

Their expertise is hard won, but at least admits that Timo and his Finns could really throw the European Union economic plans into disarray.

Noting as everybody seems  to do that their polling rating has dropped in the last poll, and this nifty graphc shows this, as well as their remarkable growth since 2007. But as a friend within the party advises us

The latest polls show some decrease in the support for True Finns (16.9%), but even the carriers of the polls admit now that it is incredibly difficult to predict our support because this is such a historical situation we're experiencing. So, some of the professors of Statistics and Pol. Sc. say that the actual support may be something like 20 to even 25% even if the polls don't show that. And in certain districts (Central and North-Eastern Finland) the support is close to 25% even in the polls.
Timo and the True Finns are in every possible media every day: newspapers (big and small), TV (all channels) and radio, not to mention blogs, discussion forums etc. The candidates are working enormously in the market places, malls and events. The foreign media keeps on trying to create a picture of a xenophopic, extreme right wing populist party, but the Finnish media is not playing that card anymore: now they say that the True Finns don't handle the politics, attack Timo's personal views on abortion,, gay rights etc. even if they have nothing to do with the party line. Unfortunately, some of the unexperienced candidates can't handle the pressure and are mocking even their fellow candidates. In addition to this, some activists have attacked viciously some parties' campaign (not True Finns, though) and these kind of phenomena have been absent in the previous elections in Finland. Some claim that Finland has become a country of anger and hatred, partly because of these (sometimes even violent) attacks and because of Ture Finns' support. As far as I've read the articles, the foreign media has absolutely NO CLUE on Finnish politics and the True Finns; they try to attach us to Swedish Democrats, Front National and PVV, even if we have no connections whatsoever with them.
Oops, this turned out to a long one :) Hope this gave you some idea of the current situation. There is still one very big TV debate for the chairmen of the parties to come, and that will be tomorrow evening. Then we can say that most of the work is done, even if Timo will still visit some districts on Friday and Saturday.
The turnout for the "pre-voting" (or whatever you call it) was higher than for the last national parliamentary elections, so we can be happy about that. However, the True Finns voters will most likely go voting more on the actual election day, Sunday. The voting will close at 20:00, so we'll receive the results of the pre-voting period at that time and the final results by midnight.

Looking forward to it