After the election results had become clear on Sunday night, Riikka Purra, the chairwoman of the Finns Party and the minister of finance, addressed the party at the Finns’ election night event at the Little Finlandia. “It was bad, really bad, Purra,” said. Purra had reportedly been hiding from the media after the advance votes were published, and the Finns Party had lost a crazy amount of votes, which the Finnish media had started describing a “humiliating defeat.” But now she was speaking on the stage trying to hold back her tears. Meanwhile, at the vote leader party of the Social Democrats at the new luxurious hotel NH Collection Helsinki Grand Hansa in Helsinki center, the party chairman, Antti Lindtman, was smiling and cheering under shining chandaliers. “We have made a historic result—a historic rise to the largest party after twenty years,” Lindtman said in his speech. Lindtman highlighted the SDP’s achievements in various regions: in Tampere, the party secured the mayor’s position; in Turku and Vantaa, it holds the top spot; and in Helsinki, it is vying for the title of largest party. Chairman Lindtman assured that the party will strive to enhance access to healthcare and improve educational outcomes in schools. After his speech, Lindtman gave a shy kiss on his wife’s cheek. After a while, though, under the supporting cheers and applause of the crowd, Lindtman went “all in” on the lips, like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. Lindtman, 42, has been one of the loudest voices in the opposition in plenary sessions in the Parliament Building. I can’t hardly remember a time when he was not shouting and blaming the government for something … usually about lying to voters or general remarks on right-wing politics or cuts to social benefits. On May Day last year, in Oulu—the capital of Ostrobothnia— Lindtman revealed missing Timo Soini, the former chairman of the Finns Party who has replaced by chairman Jussi Halla-aho in 2017. “Soini was popular, but he was neither a misanthrope nor a lover of right-wing economic policy. All that is left of Soini’s party is a name and a shell,” Lindtman said. That’s, off course, parliamentary politics and we should be talking about local politics. If we look at the numbers: the SDP’s mandate in the welfare regions (county elections) increased by 43 seats and in the municipalities by 251 seats. Still, in small towns like Loviisa, where the members of the Swedish People’s Party (SPP, RKP) dominated the results, and where the “vote-magnet” of the SDP Meri Lohenoja received a total of 176 votes, compared to SPP’s Otto Andersson’s 1,210—and where the SDP actually gained only one new seat— the SPP with 15 seats and the SDP with 8 will continue to be the underdog as it has been much of the history in the town that was named after the Queen by a King who suffocated from eating too many buns filled with cream. But this doesn’t seem to the lower the spirit of some of the citizens, in a town, where the SDP is almost like a cult. “The only thing that matter’s is that the SDP won!” shouted an elderly man called Lefa in Loviisa who was once a candidate in municipal elections but managed to pull only a few votes and still considers Tarja Halonen to be our only “true president.” “Time’s were different many decades ago,” he said. “The nuclear power plant was the biggest employer, and I even had the honor to work there for a while. It felt like ‘being part of something bigger.’” If one takes the car down the curvy roads of small towns where potholes dot the asphalt, and during all the zig-zag steering leaves eyes wandering at the time of municipal elections, one can’t help but notice all the roadside advertisements for the candidates. “One thing that pissed me off during these elections,” said a local man who drives a lot, “was the size of the advertisements on the roadside. Many were the size of an A4! Who the hell can see anything from that when driving a car? The only name I remember was Eero Mulli, and that’s only because I must have seen it a 100 times and the peculiar name stuck with me.”