Politics and Elections in the Netherlands: Rutte III era

[DavidB.]

The election is all about the Senate. I don't even know what the provincial coalition is around here (but they're all oversized/grand coalitions consisting of a subset of the establishment parties), let alone what they achieved or what the party I voted for last time (SGP) achieved. And if I don't know it, your average voter sure as hell doesn't.

I just went on wiki to look up the Dutch Senate election and found out there's an SP politician named Tiny Kox

He's been their group leader in the Senate for quite a while.

[Former President tack50]

What powers does the Dutch Senate have anyways? Is it strong? (like say, the US senate) Or can be easily overruled?

[DavidB.]

What powers does the Dutch Senate have anyways? Is it strong? (like say, the US senate) Or can be easily overruled?

The Senate is pretty powerful, as it can veto laws and initiatives. Everything has to pass the Senate. In the past, the Senate was less "politicized" as there was a broad consensus among the establishment parties and coalitions used to have solid majorities in both chambers of parliament. But now that a) there is less agreement among establishment parties and b) coalitions only have very narrow majorities in parliament and often lack a majority in the Senate, the Senate has become increasingly politicized and will judge laws based on their political consequences rather just their "quality" from a legal perspective. Which is how the provincial elections have essentially become "midterms".

If the Rutte-III coalition loses its one-seat majority in the Senate, which is almost certain, it will essentially have to discuss every proposal with other parties willing to lend the government a helping hand in the Senate before submitting it to parliament in the first place. Essentially it will govern as a minority government depending on outside partners, just like the previous Rutte-II VVD-PvdA government ended up depending on CDA, D66 and CU. The issue is that Rutte-II still had a number of "constructive" partners in the opposition. But as anti-establishment and single-issue parties have gained seats and establishment parties have lost seats, Rutte-III doesn't have too many parties it can turn to for outside support (it's probably going to be GL, PvdA and SGP, and the former two really don't have an incentive to be associated with this government), and it may have to pay a higher price in terms of policy compromises than it did in the previous coalition.

[DavidB.]

New heated discussions on a highly controversial issue within the coalition: there have been a couple of highly publicized cases of asylum seeker children being deported once their demand for asylum was rejected for the final time fter having been in the Netherlands for more than five years. This has sparked a lot of outrage and has now caused CDA and D66 to join CU in demanding a full stop on deporting children and their families, even if they do not have the right to be here. But the VVD and Deputy Minister for Immigration Mark Harbers (VVD) do not want to budge and have the coalition agreement on their side. To be continued.

I&O poll today (compared to November 27):
VVD 25 (-2)
GroenLinks 18 (-1)
PVV 18 (-)
FVD 16 (+4)
CDA 15 (-)
SP 13 (-2)
PvdA 11 (+1)
D66 11 (-1)
CU 7 (+1)
PvdD 6 (+1)
50Plus 4 (-)
SGP 4 (-)
DENK 2 (-1)

VVD-CDA-D66-CU government 58 (-3)

37% (-3) are satisfied with the government, 59% (+3) are dissatisfied.

[DavidB.]

Peil today (no changes to last week):
VVD 22
PVV 18
GL 17
FVD 17
PvdA 15
SP 13
CDA 10
D66 10
PvdD 8
DENK 7
CU 6
50Plus 4
SGP 3

VVD-CDA-D66-CU government: 48

It is certainly interesting how the polls diverge so much from each other again - guess some herding definitely took place before GE17. By the end of December Ipsos had the government at 66 seats, only 10 down from the GE.

I think Ipsos is generally correct when it comes to the parties with widely different polling results, which means the VVD is generally being underpolled and should be in the mid-to-high twenties, DENK are certainly not at 7 and most likely slightly above their GE17 level at 3-4, and there is an entire cluster of parties in the low-to-mid tens: D66, PvdA, SP, CDA and the overpolled FVD.

The PS elections will have ~50% turnout, which is about 30% lower than the last GE. Differential turnout means that the result will not necessarily reflect GE polling. CDA will undoubtedly do better than in the polls and probably be the largest party in the Senate after the VVD again.

Big question marks are GL and D66 (to what extent do D66 voters go to GL?) and PVV and FVD (to what extent do the PVV lose voters to FVD?). GL and FVD both generate a lot of enthusiasm among their base and I think their polling numbers are inflated (which we also saw for GL before GE17). My prognosis, compared to the Senate election in 2015:

VVD 12-14 (currently 13; nc)
CDA 9-11 (currently 12; -2 on "median")
PVV 7-9 (currently 9; -1)
GL 6-9 (currently 4; +3.5)
SP 6-8 (currently 9; -2)
D66 6-8 (currently 10; -3)
PvdA 5-7 (currently 8; -2)
FVD 4-7 (currently 0; +5.5)
CU 3-4 (currently 3; +0.5)
PvdD 2-4 (currently 2; +1)
50Plus 2-3 (currently 2; +0.5)
DENK 1-2 (currently 0; +1.5)
SGP 1-2 (currently 2; -0.5)
Independent Senate Group 0-1 (currently 1; -0.5)

Government mean: 33.5, down from 38.

CU-SGP will be hurt by the fact that list combinations for the purpose of the seat distribution are not allowed anymore. DENK and PVV will be hurt by the fact that their voters probably aren't too likely to turn out for an election they don't know much about (though it will depend on their turnout efforts).

[parochial boy]

I'm curious about that Denk number; my impression is that they are an almost exclusively Turkish-Moroccan party. Wouldn't that leave them basically with a hypothetical maximum of about 7-8 seats? Also, given that the party seems in practice dominated by Turks, do they actually have that much support among Moroccans?

[DavidB.]

Some more general observations:

- The government looks more fragile than the previous one. Part of it is posturing, i.e. all parties have committed themselves to being more clear about their own viewpoints and have been less committed to defending compromises more than strictly necessary from the beginning, but in recent months several special government meetings have been organized to "glue things together": first when VVD leader Dijkhoff called into question the bindingness of the climate agreement, and then when CU, CDA and D66 demanded a temporary stop on deporting children. CDA and (particularly) D66 cannot be too happy with their polling numbers either.

I still think it is not too likely that the government collapses anytime soon, though, and I'm inclined to think Rutte will stay. If he leaves to Brussels, though, all bets are off.

- The two main issues on the agenda are the climate agreement and immigration/asylum policy. The Marrakesh agreement is mostly forgotten already, but has boosted FVD's support, and the asylum issue being high on the agenda also energizes opponents.

The same goes for the climate agreement: the national mood has soured a lot after it became clear that the average energy costs per household will go up by an average 150 euros per household due to higher taxes in 2019, which, of course, is just the beginning of a very expensive journey. Climate agreement initiator Diederik Samsom (former PvdA leader) suggesting on primetime tv that people get a 30,000 euro loan to get a heating pump, just like that, didn't help either. Now the government has announced to come up with new proposals after the PS election.

[DavidB.]

I'm curious about that Denk number; my impression is that they are an almost exclusively Turkish-Moroccan party. Wouldn't that leave them basically with a hypothetical maximum of about 7-8 seats? Also, given that the party seems in practice dominated by Turks, do they actually have that much support among Moroccans?

Yes, they are almost exclusively Turkish-Moroccan. Their ceiling would be at approximately 7 seats for now, but realistically there are of course always going to be people who don't like their politics + people who don't turn out. They still have some room to grow, though: I've seen figures of approximately 50-60% of Muslims voting for DENK in GE17 and 70% of people with a Turkish background voting for DENK in Amsterdam in the local election in 2018. Of course, in the long run, generational effects will help them too.

The party is definitely more Turkish than Moroccan, but the second most visible MP is Farid Azarkan and many of the local chapters, such as the one in Amsterdam, are led by Moroccans. Support levels for DENK among Moroccans are slightly lower than among Turks, but still very high.

[DavidB.]

Ipsos/EenVandaag today (compared to last month):
VVD: 27 (-2)
PVV: 20 (+1)
CDA: 14 (-1)
D66: 13 (-1)
GL: 18 (+2)
SP: 12
PvdA: 9
CU: 7
PvdD: 7 (-1)
50PLUS: 5
SGP: 3
DENK: 3
FvD: 12 (+2)

Support for decreasing CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030 is now at 59%, significantly down from 73% in June 2018 - undoubtedly because of the negative buzz surrounding the climate agreement and the increased energy taxes.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

What the hell is with those differences between DENK poll results in peil and other polls?

[DavidB.]

What the hell is with those differences between DENK poll results in peil and other polls?

DENK attract a demographic that is difficult to poll (both partisanship itself and, perhaps even more so, willingness to turn out), so Peil is probably messing with the weighing a bit too much. Guess they're at 3-4.

[DavidB.]

Seems like the government crisis was pretty serious, but there is an agreement now, which was debated in parliament today. The compromise is as follows:

- Approximately 90% of the illegal children (and their families) who had lived in the Netherlands for more than five years but were not allowed to stay following numerous asylum procedures will now be allowed to stay and get permanent residency. We're talking about approximately 700 children here (and their families...).

- But: this is a one-off, and the legal option for illegal children who stayed in NL for more than five years to stay under certain circumstances is being terminated.

- The Immigration and Naturalization Services (IND) will receive more money to make sure asylum cases are dealth with faster and procedures take less time.

- The Deputy Minister of Immigration will no longer have the right to individually overrule the courts and allow people to stay. This will prevent the politicization of more immigration cases of children, who all look cute, are well-integrated, very likeable and all that. In other words, it removes one of the most powerful tools of the asylum industry.

- The "hardship" clause that is used to allow people to stay for a specific reason because they would face special persecution because of it will now only be weighed at the first stage of the asylum procedure. Asyum seekers are not allowed to introduce such reasons later in the process anymore.

- NL will annually take 500 in UNHCR immigrants instead of 750. Before Rutte-III we used to take in 500. CU/D66 managed to increase this number to 750 when, during the formation, CDA and VVD insisted on not pardoning illegal children. Now that CDA turned and VVD conceded, the VVD have insisted on decreasing the number again.

The agreement was attacked by both the right-wing and the left-wing opposition and some things are still unclear. The fact of the matter is that new legislation on this controversial issue is adopted all the time and somehow nobody ever manages to actually decrease the time of the procedures. It seems highly likely that five years from now, we will still have these cases of children not being allowed to stay while being "culturally" fully Dutch - which will receive the same response.

[DavidB.]

Former PVV and VNL MP Joram van Klaveren converted to Islam. He was actually one of the smart, sane ones (I met him personally), so this is much weirder than when a psycho like Arnoud van Doorn did it. Van Klaveren was writing a book against Islam when he came to the conclusion that he found Islam more logical and appealing than Christianity. But apparently it's not a big transformation, according to him, and he claims to maintain his classical liberal principles. Extremists have it all wrong, he says, and simply don't understand Islam. Good luck with that, Joram.

Other news...

My prognosis, compared to the Senate election in 2015:

VVD 12-14 (currently 13; nc)
CDA 9-11 (currently 12; -2 on "median")
PVV 7-9 (currently 9; -1)
GL 6-9 (currently 4; +3.5)
SP 6-8 (currently 9; -2)
D66 6-8 (currently 10; -3)
PvdA 5-7 (currently 8; -2)
FVD 4-7 (currently 0; +5.5)
CU 3-4 (currently 3; +0.5)
PvdD 2-4 (currently 2; +1)
50Plus 2-3 (currently 2; +0.5)
DENK 1-2 (currently 0; +1.5)
SGP 1-2 (currently 2; -0.5)
Independent Senate Group 0-1 (currently 1; -0.5)

Government mean: 33.5, down from 38.

Peil had this prognosis yesterday:

They tend to overpoll "populists" (FVD these days, PVV not anymore) and underpoll the center-right. The center-right happen to make up the entire government, so this explains the difference between his (much lower) numbers for the governmen compared to my prognosis. No idea where CU is in his prognosis, btw. I expect VVD, D66 and CDA to do better and FVD and DENK to do worse because of turnout differentiation. Peil seem to have a pretty strong pro-PvdA house effect these days, polling them at 15 while the other pollsters have them at around 10 - Peil may of course be right, but I put my trust in gold standard Ipsos on this one (though Peil were actually right on the PvdA in 2017).

I guess we will see, but the general direction is clear.

No changes in the seat poll for the next GE this week.

[DC Al Fine]

Former PVV and VNL MP Joram van Klaveren converted to Islam. He was actually one of the smart, sane ones (I met him personally), so this is much weirder than when a psycho like Arnoud van Doorn did it. Van Klaveren was writing a book against Islam when he came to the conclusion that he found Islam more logical and appealing than Christianity. But apparently it's not a big transformation, according to him, and he claims to maintain his classical liberal principles. Extremists have it all wrong, he says, and simply don't understand Islam. Good luck with that, Joram.

The "you have your 1000+ year old religion all wrong" crowd are an interesting bunch. Imagine having that kind of self-importance.

[DavidB.]

Peil.nl today:

VVD 23 (+1)
PVV 18 (-)
GL 17 (-)
FVD 17 (-)
PvdA 14 (-1)
SP 12 (-1)
CDA 10 (-)
D66 10 (-)
PvdD 7 (-1)
CU 7 (+1)
DENK 7
50Plus 5 (+1)
SGP 3

This time, Peil also shows the shifts from GE17 to now.

VVD: lost 5 seats to FVD, 3 to PVV, 1 to "don't know", 1 to D66

PVV: lost 5 seats to FVD, gained 3 from VVD

FVD: gained 5 seats from VVD, 5 from PVV, 3 from CDA, 1 from SP, 1 from 50Plus

GL: gained 3 seats from D66, 1 from SP, 1 from "don't know", 1 from "others"; lost 2 to PvdA, 1 to PvdD

PvdA: gained 2 from GL, 2 from D66, 1 from "don't know", 1 from "other", lost 1 to DENK

SP: lost 1 to GL, 1 to FVD

CDA: lost 3 to FVD, 1 to CU, 1 to 50Plus, 4 to "don't know"

D66: lost 3 to GL, 2 to PvdA, 1 to PvdD, 4 to "don't know", gained 1 from VVD

DENK: gained 3 from "don't know/didn't vote", 1 from PvdA

CU: gained 1 from CDA, 1 from "other"

PvdD: gained 1 from GL, 1 from D66

50Plus: gained 1 from CDA, 1 from "other", lost 1 to FVD

SGP: no changes

[DavidB.]

www.stemwijzer.nl has a VoteMatch test for most provinces. The statements can be copied/pasted and translated into Dutch.

My result for my province of Zuid-Holland:

Forum voor Democratie 89%
PVV 70%
VVD 70%
Local Parties Zuid-Holland 59%
50Plus 54%
CDA 49%
Code Oranje 41%
SGP 38%
Jezus Leeft 38%
D66 32%
ChristenUnie 30%
PvdA 27%
PvdD 24%
NIDA 24%
DENK 22%
SP 14%
GL 14%

[bigic]

My result for North Holland. Surprised to see FvD first, but I probably misunderstood some of the questions (as I ran them through Google Translate) and I'm not really knowledgable of the issues in North Holland.

[TJ in Oregon]

I  took the quiz for North Brabant (region selected semi-randomly):

PVV 60%
Forum voor Democratie 60%
VVD 50%
CDA 40%
SGP 37%
50Plus 33%
Code Oranje 33%
Local Brabant 30%
PvdA 27%
Elderly Appeal - Heart for Brabant - 27%
DENK 27%
Seniors Brabant - 27% (How many elderly parties do you guys have!?)
SP - 20%
D66 - 20%
Animal Party - 17%
GL 7%

[parochial boy]

Doing for South-Holland, Dutch translates hillariously badly into French. Highlight so far being "The province needs to stop shooting at animals, even if they cause damage".

Also, almost all of the questions seem to be enviornment related - is there any particular reason for that?

Anyway my results

CU - 70%
PVDA - 67%
PVDD -67%
GL - 67%
SP - 63%
D66 - 53%
50 PLus - 53%
Jesus Lives - 50%
Denk - 47%
NIDA - 43%
CDA - 40%
SGP - 40%
LPZH - 40%
Code Orange - 33%
VVD - 17%
PVV - 13%
FVD - 13%

[DavidB.]

Today's peil.nl poll has no changes compared to last week.

This morning, the first debate for the Provincial and Senate Elections took place and the campaign season has now started. I suppose nobody watches an election debate at 9:25 on Sunday morning (I certainly didn't) and from my partisan POV that's for the best, because from others I gather that Henk Otten, FVD's leading candidate for the Senate, didn't do all that well. Otten is the undisputed #2 within the party and seeks to convey FVD's position from a more pragmatic and less theoretical angle than Baudet: no focus on FVD's electorally toxic point of view on Nexit, instead going all in on immigration and the costs of the energy transition (but no focus on the theoretical background, i.e. skepticism of human impact on the climate in general, which is also electorally toxic). In the debate he apparently answered a question about Nexit in a way that could be interpreted as backtracking on Nexit, which may be used by the PVV as ammo against FVD. A good first learning moment, I suppose, and since all parties will just share videos of whatever moment in the debate is a good look for them and De Telegraaf already wrote that Otten, Annemarie Jorritsma (VVD) and Paul Rosenmöller (GL) were actually the most convincing participants, I doubt it (or, for that matter, anything else that happened in this debate) will have any effect on the election.

Doing for South-Holland, Dutch translates hillariously badly into French. Highlight so far being "The province needs to stop shooting at animals, even if they cause damage".

That's not such a bad translation. I'd translate the original statement to "The province should stop shooting wild animals, even if they cause damage."

A lot of statements are about the environment because the province mostly has powers in the area of public space, infrastructure, mobility, water management, the environment, and construction.

[DavidB.]

Finally a new Peilingwijzer, taking into account all polls and the pollsters' house effects:

[Former President tack50]

Decided to do that test for North Holland and apparently I got a bunch of local parties first. I hope it's the atrocious translation. Top 5:

Code Oranje: 62%
GroenLinks: 59%
NIDA: 59%
D66: 55%
PvdA: 55%

Bottom 5:

VVD: 28%
FvD: 34%
PVV: 34%
Ouderenpartij Noord Holland: 38%
CU: 41%

Looking a bit at the parties on top, I have no idea what Code Oranje is and NIDA seems to be a party for inmigrants (yikes! I'd definitely never ever vote them). Also, the translation was atrocious for some reason.

[DavidB.]

Turns out the government was spreading fake news in December when Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Mona Keijzer (CDA) claimed the projection that the average energy bill for a household would go up by some 300 euros annually was "unnecessary scaremongering". Turns out this projection was on the low side and the average bill is going up by a whopping 334 euros, mostly because of increased taxes on electricity. Either Economic Affairs Minister Wiebes (VVD) is stupid to do this right before the crucial Provincial Elections or he's a genius and wants to erode all public support for green measures and the climate agreement. Anyway, lots of outrage about this and rightly so. In the category "good timing...", more is to follow: on March 13, a week before the election, the costs of the Climate Agreement will be known.

The EU banned the innovative method of electric pulse fishing this week, which had been implemented by a lot of Dutch fishers already but has now been banned following a lobby by the French. Dijsselbloem was right about them. Wilders had a nice anniversary because over this issue he put forward his 25th motion of no confidence in his career, against Minister of Agriculture Carola Schouten (CU). A journalist from RTL congratulated him.

Took some pictures of the election billboards that have been put up in The Hague. Seems like the parties are going back to the basics:

For the Provincials:

For the water boards:


The Gerritsen guy from the water board election seems to have copied his font for "bescherm onze mensen" directly from a Vlaams Belang campaign. Usually I wouldn't be one to criticize nationalist campaigns but I really fail to see the relevant angle here. I thought I was going to cast a blank vote, but after some research VVD splitoff Integer Liberaal (yeah, that's a shot at the VVD's numerous corruption scandals) actually seem good enough to vote for.

In "peak Netherlands", D66 has a candidate for the Provincial States in Noord-Holland (spot #13) who has an interesting sidejob. Meet Remco Vonk (NSFW), gay escort at PlanetRomeo.

[DavidB.]

Peil.nl today:

VVD 22 (-1)
PVV 18 (-)
Forum voor Democratie 18 (+1)
GroenLinks 18 (+1)
PvdA 14 (-)
SP 12 (-)
CDA 9 (-1)
D66 9 (-1)
PvdD 8 (+1)
DENK 7 (-)
CU 7 (-)
50Plus 5 (-)
SGP 3 (-)

Coalition 47 (-3)

60% think the increased electricity costs were deliberately understated by the government, only 31% think it was an honest mistake. Worryingly for the CDA, 57% of CDA 2017 voters think it was done on purpose. 66% think the government should now decrease the (increased) electricity tax, 20% think they should decrease the income tax and only 9% think the government should do nothing.

72% say their trust in the government has decreased following the latest set of mistakes, only 25% say this is not the case. The VVD is the only party for which most GE17 voters do not say their trust has decreased: 48/50. These figures are 67/30 for the CDA and 62/36 for D66.

57% of the electorate (!) think the Central Bureau of Statistics manipulates the outcomes of their calculations based on the government's agenda. 72% think PM Rutte should apologize.

[DavidB.]

Ipsos poll for Senate (compared to 2015 result):

VVD 12 (-1)
GroenLinks 9 (+5)
Forum voor Democratie 8 (+8)
PVV 8 (-1)
CDA 7 (-5)
D66 6 (-4)
SP 5 (-4)
PvdA 5 (-3)
ChristenUnie 4 (+1)
PvdD 3 (+1)
50Plus 3 (+1)
SGP 2 (-)
Independent Senate Group 2 (+1)
DENK 1 (+1)

Coalition 29 seats (-9) out of 75.

Ipsos is both accurate and probably the pollster that has the least bad results for the coalition; they also tend not to overpoll "populists", so this is a very bad poll for the coalition. Even together with GL they would barely have a majority, and the PvdA alone would not suffice.

Also a very bad poll for the SP. A loss is expected, but losing four seats while in opposition to a center-right government would look really badly.

The PvdA losing three more seats compared to their already abysmal 2015 result would put a lot of pressure on Asscher too. Play time is over for him: by now he should have turned things around, but he seems unable to do it.

If the CDA really lose five seats, which I still don't expect because of differential turnout but which could be true (and Ipsos claim to have taken it into account), Buma (or the CDA's support for the government...) could be on his way out too. Seven seats in the Senate would be an all-time low and it would also mean that the CDA had lost a lot in the provincial councils, which are more important to them than to most other parties. The CDA keep misreading their electorate and thinking it is more left-wing than it really is.

Their poll for parliament, compared to last month:
VVD 28 (+1)
PVV 19 (-1)
GroenLinks 17 (-1)
Forum voor Democratie 14 (+2)
D66 14 (+1)
CDA 13 (-1)
SP 11 (-1)
PvdA 9 (-)
ChristenUnie 7 (-)
PvdD 6 (-1)
50Plus 6 (+1)
SGP 3 (-)
DENK 3 (-)

Coalition 62 out of 150; +1 compared to last week, -14 compared to GE17