Pro-euro presidential candidates lead in polling ahead of Finland's election today
Finland’s voters are set to give the populist far-right Finns party, the leading opposition group (formerly known as True Finns), their first election setback when they go to the polls for a presidential election on Saturday. Timo Soini, the party's charismatic leader, turned the election into a de facto referendum on support for the euro when he announced last autumn he would run against front-runner Sauli Niinistoe.
Two days before the poll, however, voters appear ready to back the pro-euro candidates. A poll on Thursday for Finland’s YLE news agency put Mr. Niinistoe — who brought the country into the euro zone as Finance Minister in 1999 — ahead with the backing of 29 percent of voters. The other pro-euro candidate, the Green League’s Pekka Haavisto, had 12 percent of the vote.
The Center Party’s Paavo Vaeyrynen, who has joined Soini in opposing Finland’s membership, was supported by just 10 percent of the voters. Mr. Soini himself drew just over 6 percent of voters.
Mr. Soini's bombastic anti-euro and anti-bailout rhetoric helped quadruple the The Finns’ share of the vote in the country’s April parliamentary election, winning them more than 19 percent of votes.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/120120/finns-back-pro-euro-candidates-presidential-poll
Always nice to see the far-right suffer an electoral defeat even if the post of president in Finland is not a particularly powerful position apparently.
