Why this happened? Josse de Voogd: "When the left starts campaigning on the cultural dimension, the rest of the country says: get me outta here. This effect is stronger once you get closer to the border. The losses of the left are larger in the east and the south." Asscher campaigning against Wilders instead of Rutte was perhaps inevitable, but it's been a disaster for the party, one everyone could have anticipated (I certainly did).
I'm sorry to chime in like a noob like this (then again, I think I've done my part in answering noob questions about Italy and France.
), but why didn't the SP benefit more from PvdA's nice pragmatic centrist
turn? My impression was that it was the one left-wing party that still focuses on bread-and-butter issues. I expected it to gain a few seats from disgruntled PvdA voters, at least (especially considering that many such PvdA voters almost voted SP back in 2013). Did something go horribly wrong with their campaign?
