Finland's Greens hope for Gore windfall
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 45 minutes ago
HELSINKI, Finland - A small environmental party has been showing
Al Gore's global warming documentary all over Finland — where recent mild winters have people worried — in the hope of a record result in Sunday elections.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen's Center Party is widely expected to win the election but some polls show the Greens on target to win a record 10 percent. That could give the environmentalists, who have been in earlier governments, a good chance of joining a new coalition.
"This has really helped us a lot," Heidi Hautala, a candidate for the Greens, said of the party's screenings of "An Inconvenient Truth."
The party is hoping to benefit from a growing concern about climate change in the Nordic country of 5.3 million, which has seen warmer winters in recent decades. A survey released Friday showed global warming has overtaken terrorism as the Finns' greatest worry.
The opposition Conservative Party has made strong gains in recent polls, and could replace the left-leaning Social Democrats as Vanhanen's main coalition partner.
A survey released Friday showed Center with 24.7 percent support, while the Social Democrats had fallen to 21.3 percent. The Conservative Party, which managed to win 18.6 percent in the last election, was up to 20.4 percent.
The Greens overtook the ex-communist Left Alliance to become the fourth-biggest party, with 9.7 percent support, according to Taloustutkimus market research, which interviewed 1,995 people on March 13-15 for the survey, which had a margin of error of two percentage points.
"There may be some kind of center-right surprise brewing, and this could have an impact on the formation of the next government, which is of course the most important and critical question," Tuomo Martikainen, political science professor at the University of Helsinki, said of the Greens' apparent popularity.
Finland, home to the world's largest mobile-phone maker,
Nokia Corp., has a booming economy and an extensive welfare state. Its main political parties differ little on substance, with broad agreement on foreign and domestic policies.
In the previous election in 2003, the Center Party narrowly defeated the Social Democrats to take the top spot, and it has maintained its lead in polls. A book by Vanhanen's former girlfriend, exposing details about their love life, has only boosted Vanhanen's popularity, analysts say.
Social Democratic leader Eero Heinaluoma said his party was not despondent over its bad showing in the polls, and would give out 100,000 red roses during weekend campaigning in a bid to win over voters.
"We're going to knock the polls. There's a surprise in store tomorrow," Heinaluoma said in Helsinki.
Some 4.3 million people were eligible to cast ballots in Sunday's vote, which falls on the 100th anniversary of Finland's first elections in 1907.
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Associated Press Writer Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki contributed to this report.