The SDP held its position as the country's most popular party.Yle News10:09Parts of the article content might not be accessible, for example, with a screen reader.The Finns Party saw the biggest gains in Yle's latest party support survey, published on Thursday.The opposition Left Alliance saw the largest drop in support, while support for the Centre Party also declined.The opposition SDP held its position as the country's most popular party, according to the survey.Support for the Finns Party rose to 15.6 percent in the August survey, a level it last reached in October 2024.During the polling period — between 6 July and 3 August — the Finns Party's Social Affairs and Health Minister Wille Rydman's funding decisions sparked political debate.Tens of thousands of migrants arriving in the Spanish territory of Ceuta also dominated discussion towards the end of the polling period. Interior Minister Mari Rantanen (Finns) demanded Spain's expulsion from the Schengen area. The minister later conceded that the country cannot be excluded from the visa-free zone simply because a member state demands it, and ministers said Rantanen's comment did not reflect the government's policy.However, the Finns Party's support already started showing signs of recovery in Yle's poll in July.According to Taloustutkimus research chief Tuomo Turja, the Finns Party gained new supporters primarily from the Centre Party and the National Coalition.Political debate during the polling period may have appealed particularly to people on the far end of other right-leaning parties, Turja suggested. He said Finance Minister Riikka Purra's Finns Party appears to be attracting new supporters from higher income brackets."The Finns Party gains supporters fairly evenly from men and women. The biggest factor in the rise has been older people — over-50s — switching from the Centre Party to the Finns."SDP widens gapThe largest opposition party, SDP, maintained its first-place position with 23.8 percent support, up 0.6 percentage points. It leads the second-place NCP by 6.8 percent. Turja said that gap is relatively large but not exceptional, and the figures typically narrow as elections approach.The Greens also gained support, rising 0.4 percentage points to nine percent. Support for the one-MP Movement Now party exceeded two percent for the first time since the last election.Left Alliance support drops sharplyThe Left Alliance suffered the biggest fall, dropping 1.1 percentage points to 10.3 percent. Turja said the party is no longer attracting supporters from other red-green bloc parties — the Greens and SDP — as it typically does.He said that voters are simply redistributing themselves among those three parties. The Left Alliance has lost support where the Greens have gained, particularly among urban women and young adults.Support for the Centre Party, in fourth place, also dropped significantly — 0.9 percentage points to 12.7 percent. The Centre has steadily lost supporters to the three largest parties and to non-voters.As recently as the spring, the Centre was in tight competition with the Finns Party for third place."Now it looks like these parties' trajectories are headed in quite different directions," Turja said.According to Turja, the Garden Helsinki funding controversy chipped away at the National Coalition's support, which fell to 17 percent.Despite the turbulence, the Finns Party's growth pushed the government parties' combined support slightly higher to 39.8 percent.Taloustutkimus interviewed 2,125 adults in mainland Finland between 6 July and 3 August, with 76 percent of respondents indicating which party they would vote for if parliamentary elections were held now. The margin of error was 2.2 percentage points in either direction.