🇳🇱 Politics and Elections in the Netherlands: General Election (Nov 22)

[AncestralDemocrat.]

Seems any attempt to keep Wilders out of the coalition will be electorally punished.

[Sir Mohamed]

Seems any attempt to keep Wilders out of the coalition will be electorally punished.

Probably. Perhaps the better way forward is to appoint him PM in a coalition agreement and call for a snap election if/when he screws up.

[DavidB.]

Perhaps an idea to take the discussion on the 'communist right', a non-existing thing, elsewhere and keep this thread for actual developments and analysis of actual things that happened in yesterday's Dutch election?

[Isaak]

Yes I think Wilders should be PM now. The dutch people have voted. There is no stopping it. It would be foolish and only backfire. He won the election. He should head the government now.

But that's not how this works. While I have nothing against Wilders as PM, it's a little more complicated than "His party got 23% and the others only got 15%, so he should lead the government."

In the end, he has to find a multi-party coalition that is willing to give him the top job. And if his hypothetical coalition partners don't want to do this, he won't get it. That, too, is democracy – as is any non-Wilders coalition with a majority.

[Logical]

Exit poll VS results. PVV underestimated

[DavidB.]

Exit poll VS results. PVV underestimated

Looks like a little bit of revisionism because they compared the preliminary results to the updated version of the exit poll, not to the initial version. The initial one had GL-PvdA at 26 and DENK at 2. Still it was an accurate poll, with its inaccuracies in the same directions as usual - a bit too high for the left/progressive parties and a bit too low for the main right-wing option, but only a little bit.

[Intell]

GL/PVdA taking a back turn in working class areas is laughably sad

[Zinneke]

Niemand in de Nederlandse media heeft het woord "communisme" gebruikt, dus geen idee waar jullie daar allemaal mee plots vandaan komen. Maar gezien jullie het toch beter weten, gaan we gewoon door in het Nederlands. Wil je weten wat ik zeg, doe dan gewoon de moeite om de taal te leren. Het is niet te veel gevraagd. Het is blijkbaar wat de Nederlander ook verwacht van de immigranten gezien hun keuze. Als je toch zo buitengewoon veel interesse hebt in nederlandse politiek, om plots te beginnen over "rechtse communisten", een term die ik letterlijk nog nooit ergens ben tegengekomen voor het lezen van deze thread, dan denk ik dat je ook wel de taal moet kunnen spreken.

Alsook, DavidB. de titel van de thread moet veranderd worden naar Nov 23. We zijn al een jaartje verder. Ja, het gaat rap, ik weet het.

Doe normaal

[Zinneke]

"Communist-right"... Well, that's a new one.

Is it? Some Dutch far right parties and the SP are not far off Juche Thought or National Bolshevism.

Can you elaborate on what you think dutch juche is?

Marijnissen and subsequent spawn are basically Jucheists. Family business, kidnapping Belgians for ransom, aesthetics over doctrinaire Marxism...it's all there.

Baudet has éléments of Jucheism too. He'd be the type to come up with the paintbrush to complement the hammer and sickle in another life where he is an intellectual Marxist.

[DavidB.]

Some interesting things on the voter flow charts. I will discuss the party's positions and dilemmas regarding substance later.

The PVV's vote came for 39% from the PVV, for 20% from the center-right (15% VVD, 5% CDA), for 13% from the nationalist right (7% FVD, 6% JA21), for 12% from non-voters, and for 12% from the center/left (4% D66, 4% SP, little chunks of GL, PvdA, PvdD - and DENK?!), with the remainder from BBB, 50Plus and "others". Particularly these 4% from D66 fascinate me.

GL-PvdA got 22% of its voters from GL and 22% from PvdA - but the biggest chunk came from D66: 29%. Only 6% came from the center-right (4% VVD, 2% CDA). The joint list retained 68% of the 2021 GL vote and only 60% of the 2021 PvdA vote. Almost a quarter of 2021 PvdA voters voted for a non-left-wing party: 13% for NSC, 5% for PVV, 3% for VVD and 3% for BBB. This is one of the causes for the loss of the left. GL, on the other hand, lost a surprisingly large number of their 2021 voters - 9% - to abstention, which may explain some of the turnout drop in the urban West. 12% of the GL 2021 electorate voted for a non-left-wing party (I don't include D66 in this category).

Only half of 2021 VVD voters returned to the liberals. 15% went to the PVV - it looks like this happened particularly in those parts of the West and particularly the South that were very VVD in the last decade but aren't VVD heartland demographically; think middle to higher income, lower 'cultural capital'. Interesting to see that the important PVV-VVD swing voter bloc is now back. 10% of the VVD's 2021 voters went to NSC, particularly in the East. 8% abstained: this is the apolitical, middle class "VVD or nah" demographic, people who don't care and won't show up in second-order elections but always showed up for Mark Rutte. I think the general turnout drop in the more middle-class Rotterdam-Den Haag suburbs, in Flevoland and in Western Brabant can partly be explained by this (this is a demographic close to the PVV switchers though). 6% of VVD 2021 voters went to parties of the left (3% GL-PvdA, remainder scattered) and another 3% to D66, so the imagined massive demographic of VVD voters who were too mad about Yesilgöz opening the door to the PVV to vote VVD again doesn't really exist outside liberal newspapers and angry pundits on Twitter.

NSC won 20 seats out of nothing. Its creation is probably the main reason for the drop in votes on the left. 34% of their votes came from parties the broader left (incl. D66). My hunch is that the 15% from D66 mostly came from the demographic of the self-declared centrists who value statesmanship that I mentioned earlier in the runup to the election. 8% came from the SP - a big loss for them. Meanwhile, 42% of NSC's vote came from the center-right (25% CDA, 17% VVD) and only 7% from the nationalist right. 8% of Omtzigt's support came from non-voters.

One story of this election is D66 holding up much better than initially expected. Although not reaching the benchmark of 10 is psychologically relevant, 9 seats still provides them with a much better position than 5 or 6. Their numbers 6, 7 and 8 getting in also ensures their parliamentary group is relatively balanced in terms of sex (5 men to 4 women); the top 5 only contained one woman. 13% of D66 2023 voters were new and came from the broader left (excl. D66), 16% from the center-right and 7% from non-voters. But obviously D66 lost a lot of voters - from 24 to 9 seats. Almost a third of D66's 2021 voters - approximately 8 seats - went to GL-PvdA. 27% voted D66 again, 12% went to NSC and 7% didn't vote. 6% went VVD, 6% to the small left, 5% PVV and 2% to BBB. As expected, the D66 vote held up better in rich, cosmopolitan suburbs (e.g. Oegstgeest, Zeist, De Bilt, Heiloo, Leidschendam-Voorburg) than in the cities, where more voters went GL-PvdA.

BBB didn't have a good result compared to the PS election earlier this year, but 7 seats is objectively not very bad either and it makes them stand out from the pack of small parties. It is interesting to see that a whopping 23% of their support comes from non-voters in 2021. 25% comes from the center-right, 22% from the broader left (another cause for the left's loss) and 15% from the nationalist right. 7% already voted BBB. In other words: BBB clearly expand the pool of right-wing votes. On the other hand, it is interesting to see that BBB's initial supporters have mostly gone already: only 34% of BBB 2021 voters did so again this time. 30% voted PVV and 15% went to NSC. For 13%, Caroline's revolution should have come sooner: they stayed home.

The CDA reached an all-time low and had a horrific evening (from 15 to 5) - expected, but still horrific. Their MPs now all fit in a Fiat Panda. The plurality of CDA 2021 voters moved on to Pieter Omtzigt's NSC: 33%. 23% stayed loyal to the CDA and 6% went to this other ideological child of the CDA: BBB. The CDA also lost 13% to the VVD and 12% to the PVV. Only 4% didn't vote (including many deceased people?), 6% moved on to the left, and 4% to D66 - mentioning this specifically because these voters are also likely to identify as centrists.

The SP also experienced a horrific election: from 9 to 5 seats. Nobody there seems to know the way up. I will discuss the substance later - for now the figures. The SP only maintained 33% of their 2021 vote. 16% went to the PVV, 16% to NSC and 14% to GL-PvdA, which shows the SP were truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have to mention the fact that this is the inevitable consequence of not picking sides on some of the most important themes of our time, namely immigration, identity, and climate. 9% of SP 2021 voters didn't vote this time.

From here I'm slightly diverging from the order in terms of size in raw votes. FVD lost a big chunk of their 2021 support. They got 8 seats then and only 3 now. 31% of their 2021 voters returned to them. But an almost equal portion, 29%, moved to the PVV - either for ideological considerations, i.e. FVD has changed for the worse, COVID has gone as an issue and the PVV are the best option again, or because of tactical voting (this probably cost FVD 1 to 2 seats). Another 24% of FVD 2021 voters did not turn out again. I am thinking of two categories here: middle-aged people who have gone further down the conspiracy rabbit hole and don't vote anymore, and younger, apolitical, lower educated voters who voted FVD in 2021 just to end the lockdown and don't care about politics anymore now that they regained their freedom. The remainder mostly went to different right-wing parties: 5% to BVNL (following Van Haga; by splitting off he banked on this percentage being much higher as he himself got almost 50% of the FVD vote in 2021), 4% to BBB, 2% to JA21 and 2% to NSC.

And the last one for now, the PvdD. This is another underrated story in this election. I have mentioned here many times that under Esther Ouwehand, the party has changed drastically: from a party that is not left or right but just stands up for animals and 'the weak' (but not too much focus on 'human issues' please) to a dark green party whose main topic is radical climate policy and which is very much embedded in activist (radical) left structures. And so its base changed: from a weird hotchpotch of protest/'populist' voters and people believing in alternative therapy to a base of young, highly educated people who are mostly single-issue climate voters.

Now, the PvdD like to say they lost their seats to tactical voting to GL-PvdA and that there was a 'scare campaign' to do so. But the statistics tell a different story. 33% of PvdD 2021 voters went back. But only 14% voted for GL-PvdA (note that not all of those were necessarily tactical votes: a former PvdD voter may also vote for Timmermans because he actually achieves something). The majority of their vote loss then goes unexplained - and I'll help them out. 25% of 2021 PvdD voters didn't vote at all. 8% voted for the PVV (a party with which the PvdD had overlap in terms of base in the past - but I doubt these switchers are now ever coming back). 8% voted for NSC. 2% voted for BBB, 2% for FVD and 1% for JA21. This means almost half of the PvdD's votes in 2021 did not go to a left-wing party in 2023. Ouwehand believes in her new course, but was it electorally smart? I truly doubt it. They lost half of their seats, from 6 to 3, and tactical voting was not even remotely the primary reason.

[DL]

Why does the Volt party exist at all? Why are they not part of either D66 or GL/PvdA?

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Niemand in de Nederlandse media heeft het woord "communisme" gebruikt, dus geen idee waar jullie daar allemaal mee plots vandaan komen. Maar gezien jullie het toch beter weten, gaan we gewoon door in het Nederlands. Wil je weten wat ik zeg, doe dan gewoon de moeite om de taal te leren. Het is niet te veel gevraagd. Het is blijkbaar wat de Nederlander ook verwacht van de immigranten gezien hun keuze. Als je toch zo buitengewoon veel interesse hebt in nederlandse politiek, om plots te beginnen over "rechtse communisten", een term die ik letterlijk nog nooit ergens ben tegengekomen voor het lezen van deze thread, dan denk ik dat je ook wel de taal moet kunnen spreken.

Alsook, DavidB. de titel van de thread moet veranderd worden naar Nov 23. We zijn al een jaartje verder. Ja, het gaat rap, ik weet het.

Doe normaal

Dat zou iedereen in deze thread wel mogen doen.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

The majority of their vote loss then goes unexplained - and I'll help them out. 25% of 2021 PvdD voters didn't vote at all. 8% voted for the PVV (a party with which the PvdD had overlap in terms of base in the past - but I doubt these switchers are now ever coming back). 8% voted for NSC. 2% voted for BBB, 2% for FVD and 1% for JA21. This means almost half of the PvdD's votes in 2021 did not go to a left-wing party in 2023.

Since when is 8+8+2+2+1 = 50?

[LAKISYLVANIA]

"Communist-right"... Well, that's a new one.

Is it? Some Dutch far right parties and the SP are not far off Juche Thought or National Bolshevism.

Can you elaborate on what you think dutch juche is?

Marijnissen and subsequent spawn are basically Jucheists. Family business, kidnapping Belgians for ransom, aesthetics over doctrinaire Marxism...it's all there.

Baudet has éléments of Jucheism too. He'd be the type to come up with the paintbrush to complement the hammer and sickle in another life where he is an intellectual Marxist.

I can testify. I've been kidnapped by them. It's why i'm a communist and support Rashida Tlaib. You know, something about Stockholm Syndrome.

[Oryxslayer]

Why does the Volt party exist at all? Why are they not part of either D66 or GL/PvdA?

Sigh. This one always comes back up.

Lets go beyond the fact that Dutch electoral law encourages fragmentation. Volt is founded as a pan-European party that is contesting elections in the Netherlands, something clearly divergent from everyone else who wins seats. That's a major difference perspective on political systems. Volt candidates can increasingly be seen across the continent, but the Dutch system is the only one lenient enough to give them viability, meaning their candidates are more than just the poetical idealists and outsiders seen elsewhere. Volt also emerged electorally in 2021, which is important here. Then the party seeking to congregate the Left vote was D66, a much more upscale option. Volt appealed to those not within this demographic, most notably university youth.

[Vosem]

Am I right in thinking that if GL and PvdA had run separately that they would've combined for significantly more than the GL/PvdA coalition? It seems like there are large numbers of people who might've have voted GL, but never PvdA, and who might've voted PvdA, but never GL. The point of combining was to try to advance Timmermans for PM, and maybe that was a reasonable goal after the 2019 Euro elections (...although in that case they should've tried it in 2021), but it doesn't seem like they actually came anywhere close, and being concerned with maintaining seat count was more reasonable.

Are GL/PvdA likely to run together at the next election? (And I realize there might be separate answers depending on whether the next election is in 1 year or 5).

[mileslunn]

It seems public prefers Wilders in charge.  I don't think will end well, but I guess maybe have to give it a try.  I have been puzzled why big shift right as left hasn't been in power in Netherlands since 2001 and last time even junior partner was prior to 2017 so if unhappy with status quo seems weird to go further right.  Only thing is this seems a global trend to right which I don't really get even though with few exceptions like UK & Ireland seems happening almost everywhere.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Am I right in thinking that if GL and PvdA had run separately that they would've combined for significantly more than the GL/PvdA coalition? It seems like there are large numbers of people who might've have voted GL, but never PvdA, and who might've voted PvdA, but never GL. The point of combining was to try to advance Timmermans for PM, and maybe that was a reasonable goal after the 2019 Euro elections (...although in that case they should've tried it in 2021), but it doesn't seem like they actually came anywhere close, and being concerned with maintaining seat count was more reasonable.

Are GL/PvdA likely to run together at the next election? (And I realize there might be separate answers depending on whether the next election is in 1 year or 5).

Not necessarily because of the strategic voting effect. It's likely several left wing parties would've lost less to them because they would be seen as more viable options.

[RilakkuMAGA]

GL/PVdA taking a back turn in working class areas is laughably sad

I saw a poll where GL/PVdA was like 2% among voters without a college degree, actually behind both SP and DENK.

Just embarrassing.

[Pericles]

I wonder if Timmermans's time at the EU and as Climate commissioner was a liability with the general electorate, even if it helped with the GL-PvdA base.

[President Johnson]

I wonder if Timmermans's time at the EU and as Climate commissioner was a liability with the general electorate, even if it helped with the GL-PvdA base.

I doubt this was the case. Wilders successfully tied problems like the housing market (similar lack of homes as in Germany) and crime to illegal immigration and asylum seekers while using more moderate rhetoric than in previous campaigns.

My prediction is Wilders minority government that will fall apart within a year or two because he'll be incompetent.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What is the difference between PVV and FvD? I'm not seeing much reason for them to be different parties u less it's just a personalist thing.

[DavidB.]

Am I right in thinking that if GL and PvdA had run separately that they would've combined for significantly more than the GL/PvdA coalition? It seems like there are large numbers of people who might've have voted GL, but never PvdA, and who might've voted PvdA, but never GL. The point of combining was to try to advance Timmermans for PM, and maybe that was a reasonable goal after the 2019 Euro elections (...although in that case they should've tried it in 2021), but it doesn't seem like they actually came anywhere close, and being concerned with maintaining seat count was more reasonable.

I don't think they would have gotten more votes separately than together, because more of the 'left/liberal' vote would have gone to D66, Volt, SP and PvdD. GL-PvdA still benefited from the 'primary' effect in which the winner of every 'ideological bloc' (in this case the left-liberal bloc) gains a big number of voters without a clear preference who will simply pick the biggest option within that bloc.

The problem for the left is that their electoral attractiveness has decreased so much that their potential pool of voters has shrunk to the point where even tactical voting can only lead the winner to 25-30 seats maximum. This has to do with ideology - immigration, climate, identity - but also with sharing the culture of the people you want to vote for you, speaking their language. As long as many people in the country get the impression that the left wants their votes and then only tells them how they should live, just like good model citizens in Amsterdam who read the 'right' papers and talk the 'right' way and hold the 'right' opinions, they will keep losing these voters. And supporting climate blockades on highways, immigrants' Palestine protests with genocidal slogans, and the abolishment of traditional holidays over 'racism' accusations won't help. A left-wing party that wants to do well needs to get tough on immigration and get rid of those types (the SP had the right idea here but didn't do this properly: they didn't go all the way to make it credible and therefore lost everyone).

Are GL/PvdA likely to run together at the next election? (And I realize there might be separate answers depending on whether the next election is in 1 year or 5).

This is still an open question but my answer would lean toward yes. The potential formation of a right-wing government could help solidify their cooperation as they have a common enemy.

I wonder if Timmermans's time at the EU and as Climate commissioner was a liability with the general electorate, even if it helped with the GL-PvdA base.

I definitely think it was. Climate policy isn't necessarily unpopular, but focusing too much on climate as opposed to solving cost of living issues and improving people's finances is. Timmermans was already perceived as arrogant and elitist before 2019, but the sense that he was pushing 'climate dictates' onto people from an ivory tower in Brussels made him look more out of touch (and unelectable) to the median voter, especially when the cost of living is so high and so many people are struggling.

If not for the childcare benefit scandal, which was the kiss of death to his political career (and the motion of no confidence was introduced by GL...), Lodewijk Asscher would actually have made a better leading candidate in this election because of his sharper focus on bread and butter issues. But I guess GL members would have been even more furious with him.

What is the difference between PVV and FvD? I'm not seeing much reason for them to be different parties u less it's just a personalist thing.

Have you read the party descriptions here and onwards?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What is the difference between PVV and FvD? I'm not seeing much reason for them to be different parties u less it's just a personalist thing.

Have you read the party descriptions here and onwards?

So yeah largely a personalist thing although it sounds like FvD managed to become the loopiest party possible even by far-right standards. They sound like a party actually based on Twitter troll tropes that usually get ignored.

[Vosem]

What is the difference between PVV and FvD? I'm not seeing much reason for them to be different parties u less it's just a personalist thing.

FvD was much more focused on conspiracy theories and anti-Atlanticism while PVV was more 'normal' in that regard. FvD had a brief bubble a few years ago because they were the most prominent, loudest anti-lockdown voices, but since then they've fallen apart, with there being a viral moment (in Dutch unfortunately) where their leader, Baudet, speculates in Parliament that the moon landing may not have happened, and then Wilders mocks him by saying "this man is halfway to the moon already".

The divide between very-culturally-right-and-open-to-conspiracy-theories (Baudet) against very-culturally-right-but-living-in-the-real-world (Wilders) might be more visible to someone actually on the right (especially if you interpret skepticism about climate change, which I think they've both voiced, as "conspiracy theory"), but from my perspective they're really quite different. (A big tell here is that Wilders is very Zionist -- he literally lived in a West Bank settlement for some time in the 1980s -- and Baudet is more along the lines of being afraid of ZOG). Reaching for American equivalents is very hard, but if I had to compare to someone Baudet would be along the lines of a Charlie Kirk (a widely-mocked media figure), while Wilders is...uh...maybe Giuliani (guy who is moderate economically and even socially but very very very extreme culturally, and has also been around as a significant political figure basically forever), or given the weird ties to foreign movements perhaps Ron Paul (though Wilders is quite moderate economically but, again, very very very extreme culturally -- his most signature proposal is banning the Quran).