HELSINKI: Finns began voting in general elections Sunday after a campaign marked by the meteoric rise of the nationalist True Finns party, which is expected to send parliament lurching to the right.
Recent opinion polls have handed a slim lead to the National Coalition, a conservative junior member of the outgoing centre-right government, just ahead of Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi's Centre Party and the opposition Social Democrats (SDP) battling for second place.
But it is the rise of the True Finns, who hold only six of the 200 seats in the outgoing parliament, which will most likely rewrite Finland's political map as they suddenly become a force to be reckoned with in either the government or the opposition.
In Helsinki, under a bright spring sun, voters trickled in after polling stations opened at 9:00 am (0600 GMT), but analysts have predicted a high turnout largely due to the controversy surrounding the True Finns.
"It was very important to vote because we need and we expect changes here," 58-year-old Harri Nordling told AFP after casting his ballot for the Swedish People's Party that represents Finland's small, Swedish-speaking minority.
The populist, nationalist, immigration-averse True Finns, who are adamantly opposed to European Union bailouts, have meanwhile seen their 4.1 percent tally from the last elections in 2007 balloon to nearly 20 percent in recent polls, although the latest survey put it at 15.4 percent, or fourth place.
Regardless of whether the party manages to get into the next coalition government, the expected influx of new True Finns MPs will likely tilt the parliamentary scale to the right, and could get in the way of Finnish approval of an EU bailout to Portugal.
Outgoing Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen, who heads up the pro-EU National Coalition party, has meanwhile seen a recent hike in support attributed to his relentless rejection of the opposition's anti-EU stance.
Katainen, the likely next prime minister if his party maintains its lead, has stressed that Finland must "act responsibly" in the bloc to avoid a meltdown of the eurozone.
The True Finns meanwhile have, despite accusations of xenophobia, vote-pandering and inexperience, shot to the political big leagues largely thanks to the common-man charisma of their leader, Timo Soini.
The SDP has suffered the most at the hands of the True Finns, as the disgruntled working class has abandoned it in droves.
In an attempt to stop the haemorrhaging of voters, the party's 35-year-old leader Jutta Urpilainen has shaped the SDP message to sound a lot more like that of the True Finns, with a more sceptical line on immigration and a new cautious, even unclear approach to the EU.
Four other parliamentary parties are also running for re-election, polling in the single digits: the Green League and the Swedish People's Party, both government partners, and the opposition Christian Democrats and Left Alliance.
Polling stations were due to close at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT), with the first preliminary results expected to tick in around the same time.
The final tally is expected to be released around midnight.
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