Finland’s Sanna Marin Might Get the Pink Slip Sunday

HELSINKI—Sanna Marin is arguably the most high-profile prime minister Finland has ever had: In the three years since she became the country’s youngest-ever leader at 34, she has helmed Finland through a pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Finland’s accession to NATO. Considered a rising star for the center-left across Europe, members of her Social Democratic Party (SDP) say she has given her party a much-needed boost, and she and her government get high marks among the Finnish electorate.

But Marin still may well lose her position on Sunday, when Finns go to the polls to elect a new parliament.

In the days leading up to the vote, Marin’s Social Democrats have been locked in a tight race with two other parties, the center-right National Coalition Party (NCP) and the populist right-wing Finns Party. The final public poll released by Finnish broadcaster Yle before election day put the center-right NCP at 19.8 percent, followed closely by the Finns at 19.5 percent and the SDP nipping at their heels at 18.7 percent.

“We have the three main parties, and any one of them could win on Sunday,” said Tuomo Turja, a Helsinki-based political pollster. “It’s going to be a really close race. It’s basically impossible to say which one of them is leading.”

Which party comes in first may not necessarily determine the next prime minister, but it typically gives that party the first shot at forming a government. If Marin’s SDP remains in second or third place, that right will go to one of her opponents, the NCP’s Petteri Orpo or the Finns’ Riikka Purra.

To international observers, for whom Marin is a rising star of the center-left, the prospect that she might lose her job may come as a surprise. But it’s not as dramatic a shift as one might expect: Marin’s SDP is actually polling higher than it was when it took over the government in 2019. But shifts in support among other parties have left Marin’s party running slightly behind, especially after a boost for the NCP (which has long supported Finland joining NATO) after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And recent Finnish elections have also been tight: The SDP came in first in 2019, thus winning the right to form a government, by a margin of just one parliamentary seat.

Voters generally give Marin and her government high marks after leading Finland through various crises: In a December poll from the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, 64 percent of Finns said Marin had done a “very good” or a “fairly good” job as prime minister. She earned praise both at home and abroad for her blunt and forceful comments on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Asked in Prague last October about a potential offramp from the conflict for Russia, Marin replied: “The way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine. That’s the way out of the conflict.”

But in a campaign dominated by domestic issues—public spending, fiscal policy, and education were among those most hotly debated on the campaign trail—Marin’s crisis management and performance on the European stage are getting less attention.

For Marin, “there’s this sort of international rock star image, and then there’s the down-to-earth political context,” said Teivo Teivainen, a political scientist at the University of Helsinki who focuses on politics and elections. “In your own country, it might seem obvious, but you are not a rock star—you are the representative of a political tendency, a political party. There are people who like your party and people who don’t like your party.”

Marin, now 37, took office in 2019 when her predecessor, Antti Rinne, resigned over his handling of a postal strike. An up-and-coming lawmaker from the industrial city of Tampere, Marin immediately drew attention on the international stage. SDP candidates and officials say Marin has helped energize the party’s image at a time when social democracy across Europe is increasingly in need of a reboot.

“I think there are people who really idolize her,” Timo Harakka, Finland’s minister of transport and communications and a candidate for parliament, told Foreign Policy while handing out campaign flyers one afternoon. “When you see the crowds, it’s absolutely unprecedented. In general, it’s such a great boost for Social Democrats image-wise because no one is talking about the ‘graying’ Social Democrats anymore.”

Although she gets high marks for her leadership, Marin’s tenure has not been without its rocky moments—particularly last summer, when videos of her dancing and partying with friends made international headlines and put her in a tough position domestically. Responding to the videos at the time, Marin said she understood that the Finnish people weren’t pleased to see the footage but said she, like everyone, wanted to find “joy, light, and fun” in tough times.

She and others in her party have since spoken out about the double standard she and other female politicians are often held to—and how differently the videos may have been received if she were a man. “There are these non-written rules still unfortunately for women, especially women in these kinds of positions, that you shouldn’t be a human being,” she told CBS News in February. “I don’t care about those rules. … I don’t think that we should give that room for sexism or misogyny.”

Tuula Haatainen, Finland’s employment minister and the Social Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2018, told Foreign Policy that women have it easier today than when she first got involved in politics. Seven of the nine major party leaders—including all five leaders of the parties in Marin’s government—are women, as are a full 42.9 percent of this year’s parliamentary candidates.

But Haatainen said “it is still a challenge” to push back against certain perceptions of women in politics, especially for a young woman like Marin. “There are people who would think, how can such a young person lead this country?” Haatainen said during a snowy campaign stop in eastern Helsinki. “But she has shown that she’s charismatic, she’s very strong, she listens but she’s very fast in making decisions, and she’s very tactical, and I think people are satisfied with her at the moment.”

If Marin doesn’t win another term as prime minister, the man likely to replace her is Petteri Orpo, a former finance minister and current leader of the NCP. In an interview with Foreign Policy, Orpo said Marin has handled foreign and security policy well but criticized her and the SDP’s economic policies. Focusing on cutting spending and reducing public debt has been his party’s core message in the campaign.

“Things are not in good shape in Finland at the moment,” Orpo said. “On European affairs and foreign and defense policy, I’m on the same line [as Marin]—the biggest changes will be in domestic policy. We have to do much more to boost our economy. We have to cut public spending.”

In the final days of the campaign, attention is turning to which parties might team up in a potential governing coalition. Just because a party comes in first is no guarantee that it will be able to form a government: If the Finns Party were to lead on election day, for example, it may struggle to find willing junior coalition partners. (Marin, for her part, has said the SDP would not partner with an “openly racist” party like the Finns.) As a result, experts say the likeliest coalitions would be either a centrist alliance between the NCP and the SDP or a right-wing coalition between the NCP and the Finns Party—both of which would put Orpo in the prime minister’s role.

Orpo, asked about potential coalition constellations after the election, said if the NCP came in first, he would be willing to speak with both his rivals but would have to overcome significant policy differences with either of them.

“There will be the huge differences on the economy between the [SDP] and us, and there will be a huge difference between the Finns Party and the [NCP] on the European Union issue,” he said. “Let’s see. First, I want to win the elections, of course.”