Belgian Politics & Elections: Federal, regional & EP elections on June 9, 2024

[Lechasseur]

Results for PVDA-PTB:



city - number of seats - percentage of vote

Well, I see the PTB had a strong result in my former hometown. Interesting but not surprising.

[Lechasseur]

Has anyone noticed the nationalist demagoguery coming out of certain CD&V politicians? Like I read in La Libre the other day that this one guy wants to go on strike and refuse to speak French in Brussels one day per week.

[Lechasseur]

Has anyone noticed the nationalist demagoguery coming out of certain CD&V politicians? Like I read in La Libre the other day that this one guy wants to go on strike and refuse to speak French in Brussels one day per week.

it's  been like that for ages. The N-VA splitting from them just made them go into an outbidding process of who can antagonize francophones the most.

Who's more francophobic, the CD&V or the Open VLD? Not even asking about the N-VA because that's basically their platform...

[Lechasseur]

I got the following scores:
MR 77%
PP 64%
CdH 64%
Défi 54%
PTB 54%
écolo 52%
PS 46%

[Lechasseur]

Ahhh, I love doing those tests with only minimal knowledge about situation in subject political scene.

I actually know the Belgian political situation/scene well, so my results should be quite accurate as I took the quiz taking into account the situation in Belgium

[Lechasseur]

This is kind of anecdotal, but I think the explanation for the leftwing surge in Wallonia isn't so much due to the people really moving left economically, I really have the impression it's out of anger towards NVA and any party that could enter government with them.

Like a huge amount of the comments I saw on political articles on La Libre and Le Soir's Facebook pages pretty much expressed this idea "get lost Charles Michel, you led a FLEMISH government with very little Francophone representation and you allied with extremist NVA separatists who want to destroy OUR BELGIUM with confederalism.", for the most part it seemed like it was only some middle aged women who were really expressing leftwing views.

[Lechasseur]

This is kind of anecdotal, but I think the explanation for the leftwing surge in Wallonia isn't so much due to the people really moving left economically, I really have the impression it's out of anger towards NVA and any party that could enter government with them.

Like a huge amount of the comments I saw on political articles on La Libre and Le Soir's Facebook pages pretty much expressed this idea "get lost Charles Michel, you led a FLEMISH government with very little Francophone representation and you allied with extremist NVA separatists who want to destroy OUR BELGIUM with confederalism.", for the most part it seemed like it was only some middle aged women who were really expressing leftwing views.

The MR-NVA argument works pretty well on the doorstep yeah, but now even Magnette isn't ruling out 100% a PS-NVA. Let's also take into account that issue salience is important and a lot of MR --> ECOLO transfers (and previously, cdH --> ECOLO) is due to environment and mobility dominating the campaign, more than migration. These voters aren't actually left-wing, they think they're blue sky eco-friendly liberals every other 5 years but they aren't once ECOLO forms the inevitable left-wing government, and more importantly, demonstrate that they simply don't have the fresh human resources to effectively govern (proof : their co-presidents, Jean-Marc Nollet and Zakhia Khattabi, are veterans of their political scene, and they've risen to their levels of incompetence in the past), the result is an ECOLO collapse.

Speaking of issue salience however there's been the tragic murder of an Antwerp 20 something woman which has put the Belgian Justice system under pressure after it emerged the perpatrator was given a light sentence for rape and should have been re-arrested for breaking probation. Justice Minister Geens (CD&V) is the big loser from this, having previously seen as one of their key figures.

I noticed the environment stuff has been a huge issue in smaller countries like Finland and Belgium,  they seem to care more about it than voters in larger countries, where most people would not have that as the main thing they were voting on.

And that seems to be a huge thing, what's wrong with the Belgian justice system? How does this type of thing happen so often? That type of thing seems to happen alot. I mean the Marc Dutroux affair was one of the things that caused the downfall of the Christian Democrats in 1999 and spellt the end of the political careers of Justice ministers like Melchior Wathelet, and even 10-15 years later when I was living there Marc Dutroux was still a household name, even middle school kids who were babies when he was committing his crimes all knew who he was.

[Lechasseur]

How come VB are doing so well this time?

[Lechasseur]

How come VB are doing so well this time?

N-VA were in the federal government and failed to deliver on their promises. VB portrayed them as weak on immigration, and the climate issue hurt them too, with N-VA mobility minister Ben Weyts toying with the idea of kilometer pricing for cars. In addition, the N-VA did zilch to pursue further autonomy for Flanders. Meanwhile, the N-VA did move the discourse to the right and normalized ideas and rhetoric that used to be off-limits for non-VB parties.

As a result, a lot of voters moved to VB but N-VA probably did attract voters from more centrist parties (looking at you, Flemish Brabant), resulting in a clear rightward shift as VB won a lot more than N-VA lost.

I mean that's the thing. These don't just seem to be vote trasnfers from NVA, they're getting votes from other parties too. How do people jump from say Open VLD to VB?

[Lechasseur]

The King is to meet Bart De Wever and Elio Di Rupo this afternoon (3PM and 4PM respectively I believe).

[Lechasseur]

https://www.lalibre.be/actu/politique-belge/pourquoi-le-roi-a-opte-pour-didier-reynders-et-johan-vande-lanotte-comme-informateurs-5cefe18d7b50a62b5b9a9d8d?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=2#cxrecs_s

Didier Reynders (MR) and Johan Vande Lanotte (SP.A) have been named as "informateurs" by the King.

[Lechasseur]

How likely is it that either of them would be named formateur afterwards?

[Lechasseur]

Vandelanotte extremely unlikely to impossible
Reynders...maybe although there will either be a procession of these kind of informateurs, explorateurs, formateurs etc or we will head for new elections.

It's all but done now that VLD has said they will not enter a federal coalition without a Flemish majority. That means N-VA involvement ( because VB and PVDA won't enter any federal coalition). N-VA rules out PS, ECOLO. So no federal majority possible.

We'll be heading for new federal elections.

Why is VLD rejecting a non Flemish majority coalition? I thought NVA and VB were the only ones that would care about that stuff?

Further reason to merge the equivalent parties IMO (PS/spa; CDV/CDH, etc)

Yeah, splitting the parties on linguistic lines was a disaster imo, and I think it very heavily contributed to the situation we have today.

[Lechasseur]

https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_le-parti-populaire-c-est-fini-mischael-modrikamen-va-l-annoncer?id=10235195&fbclid=IwAR3Ms-t3ZukDyOIBs6GPmNswFrZzfCAWXVDACgql5wDhbGNL2WOa7MqeI_8

The Parti Populaire is going to be disbanded

[Lechasseur]

Vandelanotte extremely unlikely to impossible
Reynders...maybe although there will either be a procession of these kind of informateurs, explorateurs, formateurs etc or we will head for new elections.

It's all but done now that VLD has said they will not enter a federal coalition without a Flemish majority. That means N-VA involvement ( because VB and PVDA won't enter any federal coalition). N-VA rules out PS, ECOLO. So no federal majority possible.

We'll be heading for new federal elections.

Why is VLD rejecting a non Flemish majority coalition? I thought NVA and VB were the only ones that would care about that stuff?

Further reason to merge the equivalent parties IMO (PS/spa; CDV/CDH, etc)

Yeah, splitting the parties on linguistic lines was a disaster imo, and I think it very heavily contributed to the situation we have today.

It's really not. The split federal constituencies made that a problem in the first place. But even if (just for the sake of counterfactual which is dodgy anyway) we theorise that the parties would have stuck together, the long run the CVP-PSC would have been heavily "Flemish dominated" and the PSB-BSP a "Walloon dominated", or at least perceived as such. And it would not stop parties like Rassemblement Wallon and Volksunie who are the parties that pressured the split along linguistic lines. Quite the contrary, they disappeared be side the mainstream parties adopted their stances. Had the latter not done that then we'd have much bigger stints without government.


The real nail in the coffin was BHV being scinded rather than treated as a place where federal interests converged. Parties would have to find compromise if such an important part of the country had to be fought on a platform of reconciliation. And BHV is essentially future metropolitan Brussels and needs a common governance structure if we're going to run our greatest asset as a country in a non-third world sh**thole manner. Instead we went for narrow linguistic nationalism.

Edit : I say we,  but the Flemish have to take the major part of the blame there. But VB was higher than it was now when that episode went down.

I agree, federalization was a mistake. Why did Belgium become federal and create split constituencies in the first place? Couldn't the government have forseen that it would have just made problems worse?

[Lechasseur]

https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_le-parti-populaire-c-est-fini-mischael-modrikamen-va-l-annoncer?id=10235195

The situation with PP is pretty confusing

[Lechasseur]

Very interesting articles in the press about tensions between the CD&V and it's associated pillar organisations due to the shocking performance last week. Potentially a cdH style implosion because of the various Catholic orgs no longer relaying to the party.

Which articles?

[Lechasseur]

I saw in Le Soir that Maxime Prévot is considering changing the CdH's name as part of rebuilding the party (although no decision has yet been made).

Do you have any idea what the new name could be, or which type of image Prévot wants to give the party?

At anyrate CdH probably does have to rebrand at this point, I think the CdH brand is too damaged at this point, the question would be to what and to attract which type of electorate.

How do you think Maxime Prévot compares two his two predecessors, Benoît Lutgen and Joelle Milquet?

And when you say that a merger with MR is inevitable, how long do you think it will be until that happens?

At anyrate it does seem like there isn't much room for the CdH left on the political scene (my understanding is it's basically thanks to Prévot the party did as well as they did in the first place).

[Lechasseur]

I saw in Le Soir that Maxime Prévot is considering changing the CdH's name as part of rebuilding the party (although no decision has yet been made).

Do you have any idea what the new name could be, or which type of image Prévot wants to give the party?

No but expect something very...French *hint*

I heard that some communal branches of CdH changed their name to Mouvement Démocrate (like how in France the rump that stuck with Bayrou in the UDF after 2/3rds of the party including VGE jumped ship to join the UMP in 2002 rebranded to the Mouvement Démocrate in 2007) whille others to Challenge Humaniste +. Would either of those be possible at national level, and if so which would be more plausible? I take it Mouvement Démocrate would appeal more to the type of electorate that Prévot represents, who are also the type of electorate that to a large degree have jumped ship to MR in the last 10, 15, 20 years, while Challenge Humaniste + kind of signals that the party is digging its heels in, something that doesn't sound like would fit a Prévot type party. Any opinion on that?

And when you say that a merger with MR is inevitable, how long do you think it will be until that happens?

I'd give it one maybe two more elections. Including the potential for fresh federal elections. It'll probably be like what the MCC did*, so initially a cartel so that cdH can make the threshold in the constituencies they do poorly in, then a gradual party merger. 

*and don't discount the MCC vetoing a cdH entry into the MR bubble, they have personal grudges since the split too, but Deprez is getting old and he even appears to have made up with Maingain.

That makes sense. Do you think that would be a good thing for non-"leftwing" bourgeois parties?

I saw in Le Soir that Maxime Prévot is considering changing the CdH's name as part of rebuilding the party (although no decision has yet been made).

At anyrate CdH probably does have to rebrand at this point, I think the CdH brand is too damaged at this point, the question would be to what and to attract which type of electorate.


How do you think Maxime Prévot compares two his two predecessors, Benoît Lutgen and Joelle Milquet?

The party itself might be centred around Prévot. He's seen as the "gendre idéal" type. The good son-in-law, clean cut, well spoken. He's also definitely more to the Right and more liberal in the economic sense than Lutgen who was from the farmers interest Luxemburgish wing and especially Milquet who was definitely on the left of the party. 

Weirdly I don't think Prévot is perceived as part of the old establishment parties and glued to the PS (remains to be seen with MR) the same way Milquet and to a lesser extent Lutgen were. Thus he can still remodel the party on a personalist line of "vote for me the squeeky clean guy", a sort of Belgian Macron but with obviously much less slime as we are less self-congratulatory as a people, and also less power over his party, because he didn't found it.

So the type of electorate a new cdH could attract in Wallonia are the people who realise tough decisions need to be made both in terms of economy, immigration and justice but still want a minimum of dignity for them to be done in. Prévot provides a pretty good profile for that. I really don't think there's a big constituency for that though, especially as MR must by now have realised putting firebands in communication roles like Georges-Louis Bouchez did not help them.

Brussels electorate is a wierd mix, mainly "establishment" people, people whose kids go to expensive catholic schools and muslim democrats. I don't think they can look beyond that as a party here.

I think CdH being glued to PS and running to the left under Milquet may have saved it in Brussels (thanks to getting the muslim democrat vote), but I think it really caused a decline for the party in Wallonia. I was in enseignement libre in a catholic school there and I didn't know a single person who came from a family that still voted CdH (tbf though, I obviously didn't speak politics with everyone) (this was about 10 years ago). The more bourgeois types were from MR supporting types while poorer ones or ones from immigrant backgrounds (that includes Italians) were from PS backgrounds. The latter makes sense, but I think the former all ran to MR because CdH was trying to become a PS light, which I don't think appealed to bourgeois catholics.

The problem for CdH now is the people who still vote CdH for ancestral reasons are in rural areas that are dying off, and given I think the chunk of bourgeois catholics who defected to MR have been there a while now, it will probably be hard to get them back (but I guess it's possible if Prévot does a good job of transforming the party or if something goes wrong with MR (like a bad leader or something).

And now CdH is losing its leftwing who are defecting to Ecolo. I guess it needs to be seen if a tradeoff between the two wings is possible, and how well that works out for them. At anyrate CdH is definitely in between a rock and a hard place right now.

Obviously correct me on this stuff if I'm wrong, or if my knowledge is too anecdotal.

I saw in Le Soir that Maxime Prévot is considering changing the CdH's name as part of rebuilding the party (although no decision has yet been made).

Do you have any idea what the new name could be, or which type of image Prévot wants to give the party?

At anyrate it does seem like there isn't much room for the CdH left on the political scene (my understanding is it's basically thanks to Prévot the party did as well as they did in the first place).

I don't think Prévot could do much, but I don't think he is the reason they did "better than expected" (yet still disastrously bad) either.

 They still always overperform because the pollsters always underestimate family voting in Wallonia (so people who litterally dont give a sh**t about politics but vote because mum and dad vote that way, or vote for their pillar).

Nevertheless, their core electorate is dying or in depopulating regions, their pillar organisations are defecting to ECOLO, they have no clear message, just policy, they are in the EPP (despite their efforts to kick him out at the last, the whole Orban controversy did not help them),  the youth wing and the party itself are at odds because they sold themselves as "radical centrists" and that attracts Macronista types to what is fundementally still a christian democratic party.  and they have the most split party in terms of geography (the Brussels branch humiliated Lutgen by not collapsing the Brussels gov)...I could go on.

Basically Prévot strategy of turning it into a personalist machine that tries to "moralise" politics from the centre ground is the best one...but he's no Emmanuel Macron, and France doesn't have to deal with the cesspit of communitarian politics, which Prévot does not have a stance on because, as I said before, most of the francophone political class don't actually think about things like what happens in Flanders. So he will get found out eventually, or merge with MR with some going to ECOLO.

What I predict will happen in the first case is that then a series of celebrity political entrepreneurs will try their hand in cdH with a soppy unionist message as the country delves further into institutional crisis, the prime candidate being one Vincent Kompany as I don't think its a coincidence his dad is a cdH mayor. And then when that fails they will merge with MR with some going to ECOLO.

And why don't francophones seem to care about what happens in Flanders, whether it be the political class or the voters? It seems to me it has a very clear effect on Wallonia, even if albeit indirectly.

[Lechasseur]

https://www.rtbf.be/info/opinions/detail_la-belgique-peut-disparaitre-par-implosion?id=10240352

"Belgium may disappear by implosion"

[Lechasseur]

Talks between PS and PTB break down at Walloon level.

From what I understood, PTB is still PS's preferred coalition partner, even though talks had previously broken down, is that correct?

[Lechasseur]

Do you mean the Humanist Democratic Center? cdH?

Yes them (though I did read about them in previous pages).

CdH abandoned its Christian and conservative roots under Joëlle Milquet in the early 2000s, in order to become more relevant to non-Christian voters by becoming a "humanist" party.

Now most people basically see them as a wishy washy party that doesn't really stand for anything.

Under Joëlle Milquet they were for all intents and purposes a left-wing party which lost them their old conservative vote, and then in the last few years they tried to pivot right again but it didn't get them their old conservative voters back and it just lost them their left-wing voters acquired during the Milquet years.

That explains their electoral collapse during the last election.

Basically in Wallonia and Brussels if you're non left-wing you vote MR (Mouvement Réformateur). And it's basically been that way since the 2000s.

Flanders has far more options in terms of parties for right-wingers.

[Lechasseur]

Do you mean the Humanist Democratic Center? cdH?

Yes them (though I did read about them in previous pages).

CdH abandoned its Christian and conservative, in order to become more relevant to immigrant communities by becoming a "humanist" party.

Now most people basically see them as a wishy washy party that doesn't really stand for anything.

Under Joëlle Milquet they were for all intents and purposes a left-wing party which lost them their old conservative vote, and then in the last few years they tried to pivot right again but it didn't get them their old conservative voters back and it just lost them their left-wing voters acquired during the Milquet years.

That explains their electoral collapse during the last election.

Basically in Wallonia and Brussels if you're non left-wing you vote MR (Mouvement Réformateur). And it's basically been that way since the 2000s.

Flanders has far more options in terms of parties for right-wingers.

Correct, particularly this part. MCC's defection from the Christian Social Party back in the 90s in return of the PRL abandoning its crusade (for lack of a better word) on the Catholic hold on education, effectively ensured traditional conservatives have been voting MR for ages now, although you do meet some relics who just blindly vote cdH.

Yeah that was the beginning of the end for the PSC. MCC defected in what? 1998?

So in 1999 PSC did very badly as they lost their more economically right-wing voters to PRL (1999 was PSC/CdH's worst result before 2019 I believe, and I think it was still a considerably better result than their 2019 one if I recall correctly). What was the reason for MCC? Infighting between Gerard Deprez and the rest of the party? And what were the disagreements over?

After that Joelle Milquet took over the party and decided the only way to remain relevant was to ditch the Christianity and social/cultural conservatism in order to appeal to non Christians, hence the party name change in 2002. I believe the social/cultural conservatives in the party left after that for the most part (except old people in Luxembourg province), but those voters got replaced by new voters from immigrant communities in Brussels and moderately left-wing voters in Wallonia. Who then bolted after CdH decided to back MR in the Walloon government in 2018.

I may be wrong, but I think a big reason MR voted against legalizing gay marriage in 2003 while their VLD counterparts in Flanders voted for it was in order to get the votes of those PSC voters who felt alienated by Milquet. And it seems to have worked. MR really became a force in Wallonia in the mid 2000s, and I'm guessing right-wing defections from PSC/CdH is perhaps the main factor that got them there.

[Lechasseur]

Sophie Wilmès will replace Charles Michel as Prime Minister. First woman prime minister in Belgian history.

It's more symbolic, because this government can't do much. It's all about the next government.

I'd assume there's almost no chance of the next PM (non-caretaker) being from MR?

Yeah this is just symbolic.

I think the next PM will be Flemish.

[Lechasseur]

And how is the government formation process coming along?