Dutch general election - September 2012

[Insula Dei]

Labour grandee Felix Rottenberg just told NOS News that a government coalition between PvdA, SP, CDA and D66 is "a really interesting alternative" with "a clear majority".

He warned that the PvdA and VVD are far apart on some crucial questions (eg health care) and he provocatively warned the victorious VVD for the fate which PvdA leader Joop den Uyl suffered: winning the election with an unparalelled score, going into coalition negotiations with too strident demands, and after six months of fighting negotiations, seeing the other main parties quickly make an agreement behind his back.

Is he just playing theatre, trying to soften up the VVD in advance of the negotiations? Is such an alternative coalition really feasible after all, if the VVD and PvdA really can't solve things? Or is Rottenberg just purely talking for himself, since he's more or less retired?

FWIW, that's the impression I got.

[nimh]

Once and for all, and sorry to brutalize you , but SP-PvdA JUST PLAIN WON'T happen. PvdA would rather govern with nearly everybody else than SP (except maybe PVV and SGP

I think this was true under Bos and definitively under Kok, but I don't think it's true anymore. I think by now it's in the PvdA's strategic interest to pull the SP into the governing boat, because there's no advantage for them in doing all the painful compromising in a government dominated by pro-austerity parties while the SP gets to throw populist brickbats from the outside. Marginalizing the SP was their default instinct when the SP still only had single digit numbers of seats, but now I genuinely think that Samsom is not just lying when he says that his first preference is a cabinet that includes the SP - not out of some fuzzy left-wing solidarity, but just out of strategic politics.

The problem, of course, is that there doesn't seem to be a realistic perspective of a cabinet that includes the SP, especially not anymore now that the SP doesn't even benefit from a "we're the big winners" kind of rationale. Both the CDA and D66 have made clear that they don't favour a government with both PvdA and SP.

However, Rottenberg does have a point. If and when coalition negotiations between VVD and PvdA get entirely stuck and it all becomes a big fighting mess, the only alternatives will be, again, new elections, or the kind of alternative combination he talks about. There's no alternative on the right for the VVD. So that would throw the ball back to the CDA and D66: do they still stand by their refusal of such a center-left coalition? If it comes that far, I think it's a new ballgame and they might change their mind ... might. Depending on how well they're polling by then, and who the public ends up blaming for the failure of the VVD/PvdA talks.

Anyway, lot of water under the bridge before any of that hypothetically comes to pass. I'd still easily put my money on a VVD/PvdA government, with perhaps D66 as mediator, like back in the 90s. But this time it seems unlikely they'll last four years - the two are much further apart then under Kok and Dijkstal. And the problem is that if both parties realize that it will be a temporary marriage of convenience likely to end in early elections, both will continally be on the lookout to spin any conflicts to the media as the other party's fault, which doesn't tend to help the mood within the cabinet...

[Leftbehind]

Thanks for the post on the GL, nimh. Another moderate hero bites the dust.

[Insula Dei]

Btw, Nimh, I do hope you'll stick around on this forum after today.

[Leftbehind]

Also I loved that you titled the paragraphs.

[RogueBeaver]

Congrats to the PM.

[You kip if you want to...]

Depending on how the negotiations go, first EU prime minister to survive since........

(someone fill in the blank)

[Zuza]

SGP managed to get 50+ % votes in one municipality, Urk. Second place goes to CU and third to CDA. Bastion of Calvinism...

[nimh]

Thanks for the kind words!

Ten to three, AM, Rutte just finished his victory speech. He was being extremely complimentary about Samsom, both in his speech and follow-up remarks to a journalist.

Here's something that struck me looking at the Top 10 most gains and most losses for the Socialist Party. Here's the top 10 (very modest) gains, all at 2-3%:

Bergen (L.); Gennep; Onderbanken; Kerkrade; Oirschot; Vaals; Gulpen-Wittem; Schiermonnikoog; Brunssum; Groesbeek.

All but one of them is in the southern provinces of Brabant and Limburg.

And here's the top 10 of the places it lost most support, all at 3-4%:

Harlingen; Boarnsterhim; Menameradiel; Skarsterlan; Het Bildt; Sudwest Fryslan; Littenseradiel; Dongen; Nieuwkoop   ; Enkhuizen

Seven of them in the north of the country - eight if you count Enkhuizen in North-Holland.

Basically, these small shifts denote something of a return to bases for the SP and its rival, the PvdA.

History: the PvdA's bulwarks, outside of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, were, for decades, the northernmost provinces. Whereas the PvdA also did fairly well in the east, it always had had some trouble properly breaking through in the Catholic South, where the Catholic People's Party and then the Christian-Democrats had ruled for decades.

The SP's first modest beginnings, on the other hand, were focused exactly on these catholic, southern provinces of Brabant and Limburg. Check this out, for example: an overview of the local council seats the SP held back in 1998. Top results: Oss (Brabant), Heerlen (Limburg), Zoetermeer, Uden (Brabant), Nijmegen, Vlaardingen, Schijndel (Brabant), Leiden, and Dongen (Brabant).

By the national elections of 2006, the SP could claim six municipalities where it ended up the largest party: Doesburg; Nijmegen; Oss in Brabant; and three municipalities in the former mining area of Limburg (Heerlen, Brunssum and Landgraaf). But that was also the year when the SP started increasing its appeal in Labour heartlands up north that had long been a somewhat harder nut to crack.

Take Labour bulwark Pekela, for example, where Labour had still won almost half the vote in 1998. In 2002, the SP got 6% nationally, and 6% in Pekela. In 2003, the SP got 6% nationally and 7% in Pekela. In 2006, the SP got 17% nationally ... and 25% in Pekela. (Finally!). In 2010, the SP got 10% nationally, and 17% in Pekela - i.e., it held up better in Pekela than nationally. It was a long slog for those sober-minded, silent northerners to accept those splitter-socialists from the south, but eventually they stuck. (All these data found thanks to http://www.verkiezingskaart.nl ).

OK, so the SP turns out to not actually have lost percentage points in Pekela, specifically (it won 1.1% when it lost 0.2% nationally). So, um, I boxed myself into a bit of a corner with that example. But going back to the party's top 10 gains and losses, it's striking to see it shrinking back again in all kinds of northern municipalities, and gaining a bit again in all kinds of southern municipalities. With an eye on the historical development I sketched, that seems to indicate a slight return home for both main leftwing parties.

What complicates my remarks a little, upon closer review, is that the SP's top losses are heavily concentrated not so much in the north as a whole, but in the province of Frysia in particular, which is where all those seven northern municipalities in the party's to 10 of losses are. Harlingen is a good example - here's the SP score nationally and the SP score in Harlingen for each of the last few national elections: 2002 6%/6%; 2003 6%/7%; 2006 17%/21%; 2010 10%/15%; 2012 10%/11%. So from a situation of the SP merely doing similar to its national score in the early 00s, to it clearly outperforming that score in the late 00s, and back to a equivalence again now.

Municipalities in the other big northern province, Groningen, seem to be a mixed bag for the SP this year: in some they win some, in some they lose some, without clear pattern. But compare either of that with the former mining region in the very south, in Limburg. With the SP staying unexpectedly flat on a national level, it did succeed in gaining back ground in this part of the country, presumably thanks to the Freedom Party's losses. Heerlen +2.7%, Brunssum +2.2%, Kerkrade +3.0%, Landgraaf +1.2%; Onderbanken +3.1%.

[Foucaulf]

Depending on how the negotiations go, first EU prime minister to survive since........

Donald Tusk of Poland, in October 2011.

Not much to say about the election not already covered, except that SP's wet fart of a result was foretold by the media saying a Paars coalition was inevitable. This meant voters converging around the two poles so their side has the greater leverage.

[Leftbehind]

I guess my prediction turned out be fairly accurate.

[You kip if you want to...]

Roemer's Clegg moment.

[Leftbehind]

You always find a way of working Clegg in. You'll enjoy his Urbandictionary definition.

[nimh]

How did the final scores differ from the average of yesterday's final polls?

VVD: 5 seats more than polled

PvdA: 4 seats more than polled

SP: 6 seats less than polled

PVV: 2 seats less than polled

CDA: 1 seat more than polled

D66: 1 seat more than polled

CU: 1 seat less than polled

GL: 1 seat less than polled

50Plus: 1 seat less than polled

All in all, the right did a little better, and the left a little worse than the polls had suggested. Eg PvdA+SP+GL+PvdD only get 59 seats instead of 62. In the last parliament they'd pooled 57 seats, so basically most of their (modest) virtual shared gains evaporated on voting day.

[nimh]

Still, in historical perspective that's not a bad result. Together, PvdA+SP+GL+PvdD are pooling 39% of the vote. That's in the top 5 of best results for this range of parties since World War II, after 2006 (44%), 1998 (40%), 2003 (39%) and 1945 (39%). But yeah, if you look just at the last six elections, this result occupies a modest 4th place.

Throw in D66's result and the Pirate Party's meager 0.3%, however (but not 50 Plus - thank you for your earlier feedback), and you get to 47% of the vote. That's a more flattering comparison, since D66 did much better now than in 2003 and 2006. In fact, 47% for the 'broader center-left', if you will, is the second best score in post-war history, after 1998 (49%), and on a par with 1981 (47%).

In case that all turned into too much word salad, here's a chart to visualize it - and to also show how enduringly stable the bigger picture is:

[nimh]

So how did the pollsters do?

Not especially good, considering none of them had the VVD over 37 seats or the PvdA over 36 seats. And that none of them had the SP under 20 seats.

That said, all pollsters did more or less equally well, considering that they really didn't disagree all that much anymore by the time they issued their last polls. All four of them had the PVV at 17-18 seats (reality: 15). All four of them had the CDA at 12-13 seats (reality: 13).

However, when you add the number of seats they were off on each of the parties, this is the total damage:

Politieke Barometer: 20

De Hond: 20

TNS-NIPO: 26

Een Vandaag/GfK: 26.

So, congratulations to the Politieke Barometer and Maurice de Hond I suppose!

[Leftbehind]

Nice chart. I suppose it's easier to gain support for the 'broader left' when most aren't particularly left-wing at all, though. I've no doubt the Labour party there's considerably more right-wing, you've chronicled the GreenLeft's journey, the SP travelling from Communism probably now occupies where the Labour party once were, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that D66's shift has been much the same. Hardly a victory for the Left.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You did an amazing job, nimh. Thank you for your very informative posts.

[YL]

Throw in D66's result and the Pirate Party's meager 0.3%, however (but not 50 Plus - thank you for your earlier feedback), and you get to 47% of the vote. That's a more flattering comparison, since D66 did much better now than in 2003 and 2006. In fact, 47% for the 'broader center-left', if you will, is the second best score in post-war history, after 1998 (49%), and on a par with 1981 (47%).

Can D66 really be considered part of the "broader centre-left" any more, though?  They seem to have embraced a lot of right-wing economic ideas, and I think a centre-left liberal party ought to be prepared to work with the SP.  The impression I get is that they've moved into the right-wing liberal space vacated by the VVD as the VVD becomes the main right-wing party; I don't think the VVD can really be considered "liberal" in a British English sense any more, whatever their European affiliation.

[nimh]

Nice chart. I suppose it's easier to gain support for the 'broader left' when most aren't particularly left-wing at all, though. I've no doubt the Labour party there's considerably more right-wing, you've chronicled the GreenLeft's journey, the SP travelling from Communism probably now occupies where the Labour party once were, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that D66's shift has been much the same. Hardly a victory for the Left.

True, true. These kind of labels always only define where parties fit within the given political landscape. But they don't reflect how the landscape as a whole moved. The SP, PvdA, GL and D66 have all moved to the right compared to the eighties, so the whole playing field has changed, and the division of the existing landscape between left, center-left, center-right and right doesn't, and can't, reflect that. It's like how we look at US politics and say: you only have a center-right and a deeply right-wing party .. but that's not really how those terms work, they are always relative to the given context.

On the bright side, I don't know if you'll agree, but as hard as the Green Left has moved further to the center even just this past year or two, Labour seems to have moved a bit back to the left compared to under Bos and Cohen, and a lot back to the left since the days of Kok in the 1990s. And I think the competition they've been suffering from  the rising SP has a lot to do with that. Whether that shift back left can survive a government coalition with the VVD is highly dubious, but I honestly do trust Samsom to not go as far down the Blairite way as Wim Kok did in his days as PM.

Can D66 really be considered part of the "broader centre-left" any more, though?  They seem to have embraced a lot of right-wing economic ideas, and I think a centre-left liberal party ought to be prepared to work with the SP.  The impression I get is that they've moved into the right-wing liberal space vacated by the VVD as the VVD becomes the main right-wing party

That too is a good point. I don't really think of D66 as a center-left party anymore either; they only fit that label in a historical context, since it doesn't make a lot of sense to include parties in such a chart for one election, then leave them off for the next, then put them back in the time after, depending on their current exact political line. But right now I would peg them as purely centrist, right in the middle between left and right, though other people would argue and peg them as center-right now or as still center-left.

It seems to be mostly on economic policy that they moved right, like you say, to the point where they seem sometimes more keen on liberalization and budget cuts than even the VVD. And economic policy overshadowed everything these elections. To their credit though, they've been firmly on the left on some cultural issues: they were the most strident critics, together with the Green Left, of Wilders' scaremongering anti-immigration xenophobia, for example, when the center-right parties kind of played along with some of it.

I'm not sure, by the way, if even a centre-left liberal party should want to work with the SP ... I mean, whether they're left-liberal or right-liberal, they're going to be pretty far removed from the statist-oriented socialists. In Holland, of course, everything is on the table once negotiations become complicated, and one shouldn't take these pre-election vows too literally, but I really think Van Mierlo or Terlouw would also have said that they'd prefer a government down the middle over one with the SP.

As for the VVD having moved from the right-wing liberal space to a more firmly right-wing party, compared to the days of Dijkstal in the 90s this is true of course. But the VVD has always switched back and forth between more of a pure market-liberalism focused just on protecting the interests of the rich and business (or, the one brief time, even a somewhat touchy-feely kind of liberalism, under Nijpels) and a more populist conservative liberalism with lots of tough talk on law and order, the need to restore proper values etc. I mean, take Hans Wiegel, who put so much of a stamp on the VVD and really took the party into the big time for the first time. It's hard to compare policies directly between such different times since politicians have to work with the societies they're in, but in terms of tone and rhetorics Wiegel was as populist and conservative a VVD leader as any there have been, much more so than Bolkestein and, I would argue, also more than Rutte. So the VVD has always been a party with two souls in its heart, in that way.

[Leftbehind]

On the bright side, I don't know if you'll agree, but as hard as the Green Left has moved further to the center even just this past year or two, Labour seems to have moved a bit back to the left compared to under Bos and Cohen, and a lot back to the left since the days of Kok in the 1990s. And I think the competition they've been suffering from  the rising SP has a lot to do with that. Whether that shift back left can survive a government coalition with the VVD is highly dubious, but I honestly do trust Samsom to not go as far down the Blairite way as Wim Kok did in his days as PM.

Indeed. One of the reasons I hate FPTP is because you'll rarely get such an effect, and I think it's largely why countries in the Anglosphere with the system end up with such right-wing politics - they're forced to sideline their deep disapproval with their right-wing turn unless they want to risk letting the even further right-wing party in.

Can D66 really be considered part of the "broader centre-left" any more, though?  They seem to have embraced a lot of right-wing economic ideas, and I think a centre-left liberal party ought to be prepared to work with the SP.

Well we know the SDP here weren't willing to work with a socialist, Eurosceptic Labour and I'd presume you regarded them as centre-left (although I don't disagree with your impression of D66).

[nimh]

Someone on another site asked, "Is there a reason that almost the entire North voted PvdA while the middle of the country seems to have voted VVD?"

I kind of went overboard writing an answer, but here it is - I wonder if you agree.

The North has always been a stronghold for the left. When we still had a communist party, before it eroded in the eighties and was dissolved in 1990, it was big in the far northeast of Groningen - hell, it was even the biggest party in some of the municipalities there (most famously the village of Finsterwolde). And as far back as the late nineteenth century, legendary anarchist leader Domela Nieuwenhuis was revered like a messiah in the southeast of Frysia.

Correspondingly, the Labour Party has been consistently dominant in the north for decades. As long ago as 1933, when christian parties ruled the country, Labour and the communists pooled 40-65% of the vote in East-Groningen and parts of southern Frysia, and 25-40% across most of the rest of the three northern provinces. By 1963, the socialist parties (Labour, PSP and communists) pooled 40-60% of the vote in half of Frysia, almost all of Drenthe and most of eastern Groningen and over 60% in eleven municipalities there. In 1982, the Labour Party alone got over 50% in twelve northern municipalities, and over 35%, likely making it the largest party, in almost all of Drenthe, southern Frysia and eastern Groningen. So this is a very long tradition.

The question why is a bit more complicated. At some point, I think, these traditions become self-replicating, as generations pass certain sets of values, ideas and attitudes on from generation to generation. Especially if the communities are relatively stable - there doesn't seem to be as much in- or out-migration in the North as in the West - or at least not as much in-migration, as job opportunities in the North are relatively scarce, outside a couple of cities.
The relatively lower levels of prosperity obviously also encourage a kind of class-based voting. Frysia and Drenthe do attract some in-migration from wealthier and retired people moving to the Frysian lakes or the quiet lands of Drenthe, but yes, unemployment is relatively high, dependency on benefits is relatively high, there are relatively few upwardly mobile jobs (in, say, the tech or finance sectors). Not that it's some kind of hellhole :-) ... well, maybe east-Groningen (jooooke) ... such regional differences in prosperity in the Netherlands are relatively small compared to many other countries. But it plays a definite role.

More interesting is to delve a bit into the history of this distinct political tradition of the north (vs, say, the south). It's deeply rooted in the economic structures of the time, whose legacies still linger on.

The South, leaving aside the stranglehold of the Catholic church and party before de-pillarization for a moment, was also marked by relatively many small farms, as was much of the East. But the North was different. Eastern Groningen was marked by huge farms, owned by a small elite of wealthy farmers, who then employed the ample ranks of "landarbeiders" (not so much peasants as "land workers", ie people working in agriculture for low wages without owning any land themselves, who mostly relied on seasonal work). This made for an easy 'proletarianization' and political radicalization of those "land workers", maybe similar to what you've seen in some Latin-American countries with the same kind of agricultural structures.

Southern/Eastern Frysia had a related kind of economic structure - this was turf land. Here, "land workers" were not just recruited in the region but also imported from elsewhere in the country, back in the late 19th century, to work in the bogs to cut and harvest the peat, which was an important source of fuel at the time. This was very heavy labour in bad conditions, much more so than regular farming already was. So again you have a different economic structure, without the sense of ownership or some form of private enterprise that small farmers might have had, since these workers didn't own any land, were often only hired seasonally, and were basically just worked by the bosses for profit. Again, a kind of proletarization and distinct political radicalization soon followed.

There's no more peat to be cut for fuel nowadays, but as the maps show, traditions die hard, and a region's original economic structure can leave marks on how the economy fares in a certain place for decades if not centuries. Eg, as farming became less labour-intensive and turf died as industry, unemployment grew sharply in the region. For a while, industry filled the gap, but did not change the economic structure much, since it tended to be things like paper mills (in eastern Groningen), which required unskilled manual labour, instead of, say, the Philips factories in the south which had more possibilities for a worker to learn specific skills and move up a bit. And the paper mills have long since gone too, leaving the government as a major employer, especially in Groningen.

Finally, religion played a role too. The various reformed and protestant churches that were strong in the north never had the kind of political and cultural death grip on communities like the Catholic Church did in the South and the SGP/Christian Union type Dutch Reformed churches had in the Bible Belt. Respective schisms in the protestant church often had a strong origin in the north, especially in the more traditionally agrarian areas of northern Frysia, northern Groningen or central Drenthe. So there was also culturally more of a flexibility, even away from the peat and paper mills; a less hierarchical obeyance to church leaders telling you the Labour Party was evil and voting for it would land you in hell.

[Hash]

Any data on vote transfers between 2010 and 2012 (who did 2010 voters vote for this year and stuff) or random socio-demographic numbers?

[jeron]

Oh, can someone explain me what happened to GroenLinks ?

... You took the question right out of my mouth, what happened with the GL? we already discussed CDA and PVV.

It's kind of a long story. I answered the same question a month ago on Daily Kos Elections, let me port my answer there over ... mind you, it's long-winded:

A fussin' and a fightin'



Out at sea, adrift in a leaky boat

Where has all this left the party? Ideologically, it now seems to be to the right of the Labour Party. It has proven itself a pragmatic, governance-oriented group of political professionals. But it lacks political coherence, an obvious electorate to appeal to, political allies, an engaged and enthusiastic membership, and ties to social movements outside parliament.

Voters at large are no longer really sure what the party stands for, and feel that even if it nominally stands for something, it'd be willing to ditch whatever it is at the drop of a hat if required for government participation. The party has alienated the other left-wing parties with what has been seen as a somewhat arrogant attitude, especially when contrasted with the party's seemingly endless desire to cozy up to the Democrats 66 and even the Christian-Democrats, and by what was considered a disloyal stance during the Spring Agreement negotiations. With a party leadership that's distrustful of its own members and even its own MPs, internal dynamism in the party is at a minimum. Many of the most committed activists have left in disappointment, and those who remain are more likely to approve the party's further moves to the center.

But there's the crux of the question, and what sets the Green Left apart from the German Greens: the Netherlands already has a center-left, pragmatic, social-liberal party for the highly educated upper middle class. It's called D66, and it's pulling three times as many votes as the Green Left. That's the problem in a nutshell, really. So what's the Green Left for, then?

If you think environmentalist activism is the most important thing, there's always the "Party for the Animals," which looks set to gain another seat. If you want to defend the accomplishments of the welfare state, you can't trust the Green Left and should vote Socialist or perhaps Labour instead. If you're an individualist with culturally liberal views, who believes it's important to stop the far right and spend more on education but doesn't care much about unemployment benefits, you vote D66.

But GroenLinks has already been in this position politically/ ideologically for at least since 2007. And in 2010 they still  got 10 seats, so that can't be the reason they lost so heavily.

[nimh]

But GroenLinks has already been in this position politically/ ideologically for at least since 2007. And in 2010 they still  got 10 seats, so that can't be the reason they lost so heavily.

Signing the Spring Agreement with VVD, CDA, D66 and CU, which they got many plaudits for from the pundits at the time, might have been the nail in the coffin for many of their leftist voters when it comes to this ideological shift, however longer that shift had already been in the making.

This is purely anecdotal, of course, but my father has done a fair bit of work in the Green Left in his hometown and previous hometown in the past two decades, just as local activist and sitting in commissions and helping plan stuff, and he stuck with it even when he became increasingly doubtful about the course Halsema and then Sap steered the party in, even past the Kunduz-agreement between Green Left and the center and right-wing parties over Afghanistan. But the Spring Agreement kind of did it for him, and he suspended his membership and called in to say he could no longer work for them. He said that the person on the phone, whom he knew of course, answered that yeah, they'd had a series of similar calls.

Again, that's purely anecdotal, but even under Halsema there was still a sort of sense that the Green Left was positioned to the left of Labour. This year changed that impression, and I think it has cost them electorally.

Well - all that in addition to all the stuff described under "A fussin' and a fightin', of course. If they hadn't fallen all over themselves all year long, they would have lost several seats, I think, but wouldn't have been decimated. But add the party's longer-term, consistent loss of its old identity and electorate to its short-term gross management misconduct and you have a disastrous result.

This, of course, is just my opinion ... I may well be wrong. :-) I'm probably also somewhat biased, since I, too, used to be active locally, and left the party already a few years before my dad, around 2006.