Everybody loves Tarja

According to a recent Suomen Gallup poll, 84 percent of Finns give (fi) President Tarja Halonen (Social Democratic Party) a very good or a quite good grade. The main difference in the past six months is that National Coalition Party supporters have grown less happy with the way she handles foreign policy.

I wonder, to what extent are Halonen's ratings and the high ratings of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen about their performance in office. If we replaced Halonen with the corpse of Lauri Kristian Relander, would the ratings remain as high? While the support for Halonen and Vanhanen is broad, election results suggest that it isn't very deep. When given alternatives, many of the people who say Halonen and Vanhanen are doing their jobs well voted for someone else. Before the election people expressed confidence in the centre-left government and hoped that the next government was based on the Centre Party and the Social Democratic Party. After the election, they expressed confidence in the centre-right government and considerd a coalition of the Centre and the National Coalition Party to offer the best basis for a government. Approval and support are two different things.

In other polling news, the latest Taloustutkimus poll (fi) is out. There aren't any big changes in it. The Centre and the Coalition gain a little; the Social Democrats lose some support; but it's all within the margin of error. Here's the table:

CP   NCP  SDP  LA  GL   CD  SPP TF  gov  source
23.1 22.3 21.4 8.8 8.5  4.9 4.6 4.1 58.5 PE 3/18
23.0 24.1 20.7 8.2 9.4  4.5 4.4 4.5 60.9 TT 4/5
22.8 23.3 21.1 8.4 8.9  4.5 4.3 4.9 59.3 SG 5/20
23.4 23.3 20.8 9.0 9.6  5.0 4.1 4.4 60.4 RI 5/25
22.4 23.4 21.7 8.4 10.1 4.7 4.1 4.3 60.0 TT 6/9
23.0 23.2 21.5 8.3 9.0  4.3 4.2 5.0 59.4 SG 6/26
22.8 23.9 21.2 8.5 9.3  4.7 4.4 4.3 60.4 TT 7/2

Legend:
CP = Centre Party
NCP = National Coalition Party
SDP = Social Democratic Party
LA = Left Alliance
GL = Green League
CD = Christian Democrats
SPP = Swedish People's Party
TF = True Finns
gov = government parties
PE = parliamentary election
TT = Taloustutkimus / YLE
SG = Suomen Gallup (TNS-Gallup) / Helsingin Sanomat
RI = Research International Finland / MTV3