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

[DavidB.]

On Monday, before some big developments but after the collapse of the government, EenVandaag conducted a poll regarding the acceptability of potential PM candidates by the general electorate:

Pieter Omtzigt (independent): 56%
Klaas Dijkhoff (VVD): 46%
Dilan Yesilgöz (VVD): 33%
Caroline van der Plas (BBB): 29%
Frans Timmermans (PvdA): 29%
Geert Wilders (PVV): 24%
Mona Keijzer (CDA): 22%
Jesse Klaver (GL): 21%
Attje Kuiken (PvdA): 19%
Sigrid Kaag (D66): 18%
Rob Jetten (D66): 18%
Derk Boswijk (CDA): 9%

Very low percentages across the board, but striking to see how low Timmermans scores (certainly doesn't indicate he'll attract a lot of centrists) and the massive difference between Omtzigt and Van der Plas probably matters a lot too. Also surprised about the rather high percentage for Wilders. Kaag's popularity has clearly tanked, which is corroborated by I&O polls of the ministers' approval - in the previous government she had always been one of the highest rated ministers, but not anymore. Also starting to think Dijkhoff would have been the better pick for the VVD purely from an electoral perspective - but he didn't want to do it, as he says he cannot combine a continued career in politics with being a father in the way he wants to be.

[DavidB.]

Maybe good to do a write-up about the parties and their state for those new to this thread or to Dutch politics. The order is based on size after the 2021 general election.

The VVD historically represents one of the four traditional pillars in the Netherlands: the liberal/"general" pillar. It generally stands for right-wing liberalism, with a focus on free markets, business, security, law and order, international multilateralism/Atlanticism, and limited government involvement into people's lives. Usually, the VVD played second fiddle to the larger CDA and PvdA. It was a favorite government partner for the CDA to form center-right governments. In the 80s and early 90s, the party had a more liberal shift, which led to the formation of the two social democrat-led "purple" governments (PvdA-VVD-D66). After that, the pendulum swung right again and the VVD started to become tougher on both immigration and law and order. In 2010, Mark Rutte made the VVD the biggest party for the first time in its history and became Prime Minister - first with a right-wing government with CDA and outside support from PVV, then a centrist one with the PvdA, and then number three and number four with CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie. Over these years, it has been Rutte's misfortune that he had to compromise with more left-wing partners so much that the VVD has started looking like a cameleon. The VVD's liberal profile is heavily damaged - after 13 years in power, it has basically become the party of power and Rutte's personal vehicle, like German CDU under Merkel. It is his successor Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius' task to give the VVD a clear ideological profile again. The cause of the government collapse - immigration policy - will perhaps help her in solidifying the right-wing base, which has been unhappy with Rutte's compromises.

Democrats 66 (D66) is a socially liberal party that was founded to destroy a rusty, old, pillarized political system and radically democratize both politics and society. Its electoral performance looks like the movement of a jojo and can be explained by the mantra "governing means having" (which sounds better in Dutch: regeren is halveren). After the purple governments in the 90s and the following center-right government with CDA and VVD (2003-2006), the party had governed for too long and achieved too little in the way of democratization to still credibly serve its old purpose, although they were instrumental in passing some of the most socially liberal legislation regarding euthanasia and gay rights. They hit rock bottom with 3 seats in 2006, but new leader Alexander Pechtold managed to reinvent the party by dropping the old democratic "crown jewels" (referendum, elected mayor) and instead becoming the most vocal "anti-populist" party, in opposition to the PVV, who were riding high in the polls. The strategy paid off and led to more than a decade of electoral success, in 2019 culminating to 19 seats and government participation in Rutte-III (and the complete abandonment of their founding principles: it was a D66 Interior Minister who killed the short-lived referendum; to many Dutchmen, D66 nowadays look like the very embodiment of the establishment they were founded to fight). Rob Jetten and career-diplomat-turned-minister Sigrid Kaag built on Pechtold's legacy and made the savvy move to start taking incredibly polarizing stances on climate policy to profile themselves while in government. This led to 24 seats in the 2021 election - but the subsequent backlash in society (farmers' protests) and, later, in politics (BBB victory in provincial elections 2023) was considerable, and Kaag's approvals were tanking along with D66's virtual seat number. D66 tried everything to avoid a collapse of the government and, two weeks ago, agreed to a whole range of restrictions to asylum immigration, which would previously be unimaginable with them in the government. However, it did not help, and Sigrid Kaag is set to quit politics - officially over the massive amount of threats and hate she receives, which is difficult for her family (on TV, her daughters asked her to quit), but unofficially also because some wrong political calls and mishandling of internal scandals left her quite damaged too. Rob Jetten, a very savvy campaigner, is set to take over.

The PVV is a nationalist, populist party which has one member: Geert Wilders. Because of this unconventional structure, they are (he is) ineligible for government subsidies. He founded the party in 2006 and has led the party with a strong hand. What sets Wilders apart from similar parties in Europe is his specific, particularly vigorous animosity towards Islam as a religion. He lives under the strictest type of security regime and cannot even walk the street without an army of bodyguards. Wilders was originally a VVD MP but left the party over Turkey's potential accession to the EU. In 2009, he received his best result to date in the European election and was the talk of the town, and in 2010, he gained 24 seats in parliament. As a result, he provided confidence and supply to the most right-wing post-war government consisting of VVD and CDA. This government collapsed two years later, which left Wilders in the wilderness and also led him to radicalize, culminating in a speech in which he made his supporters chant they want "fewer, fewer, fewer Moroccans" in 2014. This did not prevent him from riding high in the polls during the migrant crisis and the PVV were set to win the 2017 general election two months in advance, but Wilders refused to campaign and eventually his numbers tanked. Because of his radicalization, times in which there were VVD-PVV swing voters were long gone, and there was even space between them - this void was first filled by FVD and later by a whole range of other right-wing parties, which now cause perpetual competition within the same voter pool - difficult for the PVV because they have no money. However, there are signs that the PVV slowly start to become coalitionable again: this happened provincially in Flevoland. Wilders has been rather moderate lately, without any unheard of statements regarding Islam, and has been outflanked on the right by FVD, looking moderate in comparison. If the VVD would be open to cooperating with the PVV again, this would greatly increase the PVV's electoral chances, currently hurt by the impression that voting PVV is a "lost vote" - so far, Yesilgöz has said nothing about the matter. Still, the PVV are expected to lose seats to the latest right-wing flash in the pan: BBB.

Which is a nice bridge to the CDA, full name Christian Democratic Appeal. This party (centrist, slight tilt to the right) is a merger of three "confessional" parties, belonging to the Catholic and Protestant pillars. These parties were the Netherlands' natural governing parties. When secularization set in, the merger of the three parties was an attempt not to lose power over the Netherlands. The CDA mentality could be captured by the infamous quote (in English) "We rule this country" and the merger was a success, leading to a revival of the CDA in the 1980s. Only in 1994 a government was formed without Christian Democrats, which lasted until 2002 and brought all sorts of social liberal changes. But from 2002 until 2010, the CDA became the largest party again under the leadership of Jan Peter Balkenende. After this, however, the party lost direction. It had a short revival under Sybrand Buma (19 seats in 2017, after a stint in opposition), who steered the party into a slightly more conservative direction, but has experienced massive personal and factional infighting ever since Buma's departure. The low point was most definitely the technically dubious leadership election (2020) between Hugo de Jonge and Pieter Omtzigt, De Jonge's subsequent departure due to tanking polls, Wopke Hoekstra taking over and Pieter Omtzigt being bullied out of the party right after the 2021 election. For this, for its lack of ideas, and for its lack of visibility in the Rutte-III and Rutte-IV governments, the CDA is set to receive a shellacking in the next general election. Party leader Hoekstra, who made the unfortunate choice to become Minister of Foreign Affairs and be abroad all the time while his party was in disarray, resigned, and there is a massive exodus among members. One MP after another declares they will not be a candidate in the November election. Meanwhile, new party BBB is capturing the type of voters the CDA used to rely on, with Omtzigt potentially running too. The question is who wants to lead the CDA to the slaughterhouse - and quite frankly the question is also what added value the CDA still has. There are some potential lanes, but the CDA consistently refuses to pick one.

To be continued.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maybe good to do a write-up about the parties and their state for those new to this thread or to Dutch politics. The order is based on size after the 2021 general election.

The VVD historically represents one of the four traditional pillars in the Netherlands: the liberal/"general" pillar. It generally stands for right-wing liberalism, with a focus on free markets, business, security, law and order, international multilateralism/Atlanticism, and limited government involvement into people's lives. Usually, the VVD played second fiddle to the larger CDA and PvdA. It was a favorite government partner for the CDA to form center-right governments. In the 80s and early 90s, the party had a more liberal shift, which led to the formation of the two social democrat-led "purple" governments (PvdA-VVD-D66). After that, the pendulum swung right again and the VVD started to become tougher on both immigration and law and order. In 2010, Mark Rutte made the VVD the biggest party for the first time in its history and became Prime Minister - first with a right-wing government with CDA and outside support from PVV, then a centrist one with the PvdA, and then number three and number four with CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie. Over these years, it has been Rutte's misfortune that he had to compromise with more left-wing partners so much that the VVD has started looking like a cameleon. The VVD's liberal profile is heavily damaged - after 13 years in power, it has basically become the party of power and Rutte's personal vehicle, like German CDU under Merkel. It is his successor Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius' task to give the VVD a clear ideological profile again. The cause of the government collapse - immigration policy - will perhaps help her in solidifying the right-wing base, which has been unhappy with Rutte's compromises.

Democrats 66 (D66) is a socially liberal party that was founded to destroy a rusty, old, pillarized political system and radically democratize both politics and society. Its electoral performance looks like the movement of a jojo and can be explained by the mantra "governing means having" (which sounds better in Dutch: regeren is halveren). After the purple governments in the 90s and the following center-right government with CDA and VVD (2003-2006), the party had governed for too long and achieved too little in the way of democratization to still credibly serve its old purpose, although they were instrumental in passing some of the most socially liberal legislation regarding euthanasia and gay rights. They hit rock bottom with 3 seats in 2006, but new leader Alexander Pechtold managed to reinvent the party by dropping the old democratic "crown jewels" (referendum, elected mayor) and instead becoming the most vocal "anti-populist" party, in opposition to the PVV, who were riding high in the polls. The strategy paid off and led to more than a decade of electoral success, in 2019 culminating to 19 seats and government participation in Rutte-III (and the complete abandonment of their founding principles: it was a D66 Interior Minister who killed the short-lived referendum; to many Dutchmen, D66 nowadays look like the very embodiment of the establishment they were founded to fight). Rob Jetten and career-diplomat-turned-minister Sigrid Kaag built on Pechtold's legacy and made the savvy move to start taking incredibly polarizing stances on climate policy to profile themselves while in government. This led to 24 seats in the 2021 election - but the subsequent backlash in society (farmers' protests) and, later, in politics (BBB victory in provincial elections 2023) was considerable, and Kaag's approvals were tanking along with D66's virtual seat number. D66 tried everything to avoid a collapse of the government and, two weeks ago, agreed to a whole range of restrictions to asylum immigration, which would previously be unimaginable with them in the government. However, it did not help, and Sigrid Kaag is set to quit politics - officially over the massive amount of threats and hate she receives, which is difficult for her family (on TV, her daughters asked her to quit), but unofficially also because some wrong political calls and mishandling of internal scandals left her quite damaged too. Rob Jetten, a very savvy campaigner, is set to take over.

The PVV is a nationalist, populist party which has one member: Geert Wilders. Because of this unconventional structure, they are (he is) ineligible for government subsidies. He founded the party in 2006 and has led the party with a strong hand. What sets Wilders apart from similar parties in Europe is his specific, particularly vigorous animosity towards Islam as a religion. He lives under the strictest type of security regime and cannot even walk the street without an army of bodyguards. Wilders was originally a VVD MP but left the party over Turkey's potential accession to the EU. In 2009, he received his best result to date in the European election and was the talk of the town, and in 2010, he gained 24 seats in parliament. As a result, he provided confidence and supply to the most right-wing post-war government consisting of VVD and CDA. This government collapsed two years later, which left Wilders in the wilderness and also led him to radicalize, culminating in a speech in which he made his supporters chant they want "fewer, fewer, fewer Moroccans" in 2014. This did not prevent him from riding high in the polls during the migrant crisis and the PVV were set to win the 2017 general election two months in advance, but Wilders refused to campaign and eventually his numbers tanked. Because of his radicalization, times in which there were VVD-PVV swing voters were long gone, and there was even space between them - this void was first filled by FVD and later by a whole range of other right-wing parties, which now cause perpetual competition within the same voter pool - difficult for the PVV because they have no money. However, there are signs that the PVV slowly start to become coalitionable again: this happened provincially in Flevoland. Wilders has been rather moderate lately, without any unheard of statements regarding Islam, and has been outflanked on the right by FVD, looking moderate in comparison. If the VVD would be open to cooperating with the PVV again, this would greatly increase the PVV's electoral chances, currently hurt by the impression that voting PVV is a "lost vote" - so far, Yesilgöz has said nothing about the matter. Still, the PVV are expected to lose seats to the latest right-wing flash in the pan: BBB.

Which is a nice bridge to the CDA, full name Christian Democratic Appeal. This party (centrist, slight tilt to the right) is a merger of three "confessional" parties, belonging to the Catholic and Protestant pillars. These parties were the Netherlands' natural governing parties. When secularization set in, the merger of the three parties was an attempt not to lose power over the Netherlands. The CDA mentality could be captured by the infamous quote (in English) "We rule this country" and the merger was a success, leading to a revival of the CDA in the 1980s. Only in 1994 a government was formed without Christian Democrats, which lasted until 2002 and brought all sorts of social liberal changes. But from 2002 until 2010, the CDA became the largest party again under the leadership of Jan Peter Balkenende. After this, however, the party lost direction. It had a short revival under Sybrand Buma (19 seats in 2017, after a stint in opposition), who steered the party into a slightly more conservative direction, but has experienced massive personal and factional infighting ever since Buma's departure. The low point was most definitely the technically dubious leadership election (2020) between Hugo de Jonge and Pieter Omtzigt, De Jonge's subsequent departure due to tanking polls, Wopke Hoekstra taking over and Pieter Omtzigt being bullied out of the party right after the 2021 election. For this, for its lack of ideas, and for its lack of visibility in the Rutte-III and Rutte-IV governments, the CDA is set to receive a shellacking in the next general election. Party leader Hoekstra resigned and there is a massive exodus among members. Meanwhile, new party BBB is capturing the type of voters the CDA used to rely on, with Omtzigt potentially running too. The question is who wants to lead the CDA to the slaughterhouse - and quite frankly the question is also what added value the CDA still has. There are some potential lanes, but the CDA consistently refuses to pick one.

To be continued.

Thanks for the rundown. I look forward to more.

[DavidB.]

Until 2021, the SP (Socialistische Partij) was the most anti-capitalist party in parliament. Established as an extra-parliamentary movement in the early 70s, it has Maoist roots, but started orienting itself to the Soviet Union quickly after. In 1983, it published Guest labour and capital, a manifesto in which the influx of guest workers was attributed to the needs of Big Capital and which proposed to offer immigrants two options: remigration (with ƒ75.000 guilders) or assimilation. The manifesto received much attention and was vilified by both the left and the right. After this, under influence of global developments, the SP started swearing off Marxism-Leninism - it did so officially in 1991. Under the charismatic leadership of Jan Marijnissen, the party entered parliament for the first time in 1994 and had its heydays in the mid-2000s: 25 seats in 2006. At the time, it was the only party to distinguish itself from the establishment parties, which had lost their "ideological feathers" in the late 80s and 90s. But Marijnissen quit his job as party leader in 2008 and the party never found the way up again - although Emile Roemer came close in 2012, but then collapsed spectacularly a few weeks before the finish. After Roemer, Lilian Marijnissen (daughter of) became party leader and steered the party back into a less "internationalist", "intersectionalist" direction. Vocal MPs Sadet Karabulut and Sharon Gesthuizen went though the exit door and the youth wing Rood (Red), in which support for communism was widespread, was decoupled from the party and derided in the media as radicalized "attic room communists". This morning, Lilian Marijnissen announced she will run for party leader again and has the full support of the board. Over the last 10 years, the SP has barely won an election - it has ideas, but presents them too dogmatically in socialist language that does not necessary attract people who don't care about socialism per se, but just want a better life. Too much evangelizing, not enough campaigning. Another often-mentioned reason for their decline is tied to the latter point: the SP is viewed as too conservative on issues like immigration and climate to attract younger far-left people, but not conservative enough to attract many disaffected working-class voters. To put it differently: on culture war issues, the SP is on the sideline - dogmatically correct, probably, but electorally fruitless. With the highly visible and popular MP Renske Leijten also leaving, the SP is set to lose more seats. But they may enter the government for the first time anyway: in De Telegraaf, Marijnissen said she wants to cooperate with BBB and Pieter Omtzigt. BBB has also indicated interest in including the SP in government. To be continued...

Let's discuss PvdA and GroenLinks together - I'm sure that's what they would want. The PvdA (pre-war: SDAP, for Social Democratic Workers' Party) is the old party of the Social Democratic pillar in Dutch society with a rich history and one of the most iconic Prime Ministers, Willem Drees, under whose 10-year leadership (1948-1958) the Netherlands was rebuilt and the modern welfare state was introduced. In the 70s, the party made sharp left turn and led the most left-wing post-war government under its second PM, Joop den Uyl. Despite coming first in the 1977 election, the party was sidelined by CDA and VVD and stayed in opposition until 1989 (apart from a short-lived stint in the fighting government Van Agt-II with CDA and D66, 1982-83). Under Wim Kok, the party moderated again, lost its "ideological feathers" (their term, not mine), and was in government with CDA (1989-1994), VVD and D66 (1994-2002). In the meantime, it had lost touch with its roots: it had lost its vocal left wing to GL (and predecessors) and workers to parties all around the political spectrum, from SP to VVD. Particularly its relation to the topics of immigration and integration remains contentious - although it was CDA and VVD, not the PvdA, who brought the guest workers over, and although they were in government for most of the time, it is mostly the PvdA that is associated with being too "pro-immigrant". The party was on the decline but still competed for first place in the elections in 2006, 2010 and 2012 - and lost all three times. Then, it took the disastrous decision to enter the Rutte-II government with the VVD. This government did not do compromises - it simply traded entire policy areas. PvdA ministers carried out massive budget cuts in the public sector (often sold as decentralizations) that caused public finances to become healthier than ever, but people in need of assistance were caught in a giant web of bureaucracy and unwillingness. The worst part of this being the childcare benefit scandal, in which parents (usually the "working poor", often with a foreign background) were falsely accused of fraud with subsidies and had to pay tens of thousands of euros, with their children sometimes being taken away from them. Under the new leader (but deputy PM under Rutte-II) Lodewijk Asscher, the party collapsed: from 38 to 9 seats. In the following stint in opposition, the party seemed to recover under Asscher's leadership, but a GL (!) motion forced him to resign as party leader over the aforementioned childcare benefit scandal. With Lilianne Ploumen, they were back at square one and won only 9 seats again, and things don't look better under the leadership of Ploumen's replacement, the very forgettable Attje Kuiken. Still, there is a solid bloc of about one third of society who vote for left/progressive parties - the point is they all flocked to D66.

To catch them all, better merge with... GL, originally (1990) a merger of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, the Pacifist Socialist Party, the Political Party Radicals, and the Evangelical People's Party (Christian Left). It functioned as the most left-wing party in parliament until the entrance of the SP. Under Femke Halsema's leadership (2002-2010), in line with the times, the party turned in a more liberal direction, towards D66 and away from the SP. After Halsema's departure (the party failed to enter a "Purple Plus" government with VVD, PvdA and D66 because the VVD decided to turn right), the disastrous Jolande Sap took over and made a spectacular crash: 4 seats, barely. Their number four, charismatic Jesse Klaver, became party leader; he created and rode a wave of green politics, and received a record high of 14 seats in the 2017 election. Then, Klaver negotiated to enter a government with VVD, CDA and D66, but these negotiations collapsed because of GL's refusal to support migration deals with non-EU countries - a decision GL later regretted deeply. Nothing lasts forever and Jesse Klaver's shine wore off. D66 stole their thunder in 2021 and GL led a painful and slightly unexpected defeat: from 14 to 9 seats. Still, GL and PvdA were open to joining the government, but only together. Mark Rutte didn't want to govern with a "left-wing cloud" and demanded a merger between the two if they were to negotiate with VVD, CDA and D66 - interestingly, this is ultimately what sparked the close cooperation between the two. With Kaag's shine wearing off (note how this is a common theme and votes tend to make wild swings, but stay within the same subset of ideologically similar parties), GL and PvdA went slightly up again, and together they could have a shot of becoming the biggest party. Members of both parties can decide until Monday whether they want this (spoiler: yes). Then, there will be a process of choosing (this may not mean: electing) the leading candidate and, potentially, the candidate for the position of Prime Minister; EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans (Climate) seems open for the latter position but not the former. Upside: much media attention for all of this. Downside: none of this is about what people need in their lives or about ideas for change, it's all about internal GL-PvdA processes.

To be continued...

[Harlow]

First Peil poll since the government collapsed:

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1680479378080251905?s=20

They also tested different scenarios:

Scenario: Omtzigt (*) forms a new party

Omtzigt-*: 29 (n.a.)
VVD-RE: 23 (-2)
PvdA/GL-S&D|G/EFA: 22 (-3)
BBB-*: 15 (-10)
PVV→ID: 12 (-3)
...

Scenario: Timmermans leads PvdA/GL

PvdA/GL-S&D|G/EFA: 28 (+3)
BBB-*: 25
VVD-RE: 25
PVV→ID: 15
D66-RE: 8 (-1)
PvdD-LEFT: 7 (-1)
CDA-EPP: 7
…

Looks like a BBB v. PvdA vs. VVD race at the moment, but still early going obviously. I wonder how long Omtzigt has to form a new party before he pulls a Desantis and misses his window of momentum (and also just, on a technical level).

[DavidB.]

Best visualization of the Peil poll: green is scenario with Omtzigt party, red is scenario without Omtzigt party. Looks like the VVD pulling the plug on the government has actually helped them and Rutte stepping aside for Yesilgöz too, very interesting. BBB are losing to VVD and PVV.

https://twitter.com/mauricedehond/status/1680467539489349632?s=20

[DavidB.]

Next up: Forum voor Democratie (FVD; Forum for Democracy), these days the most right-wing party in parliament. But it wasn't always like that: the party's development over the last years resembles a bizarre rollercoaster ride. FVD was founded in 2016 by the charismatic Thierry Baudet, who holds a PhD in legal philosophy and entered the national limelight in the 2016 referendum campaign on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, to which Baudet was opposed. Meanwhile, disappointment with the sidelined PVV had grown - there was a clear demand for a party that could represent voters who thought the VVD had turned too far to the left, but the PVV too far to the right - a party that would be coalitionable, too. FVD focused on less bureaucracy, more direct democracy (i.e. binding referendums), and less immigration (the 'Australian model').

After an energetic campaign, Forum entered parliament in 2017 and immediately managed to catch a lot of attention by doing things differently - Baudet spoke Latin in parliament, wore an army vest in a speech on the deplorable state of our military, etc. This led to rising polling numbers. The perfect storm came in 2019, when the government's climate policies and the Marrakesh immigration agreement were two of the most hotly debated topics: Forum for Democracy came first in the Provincial/Senate election in March, focusing on the topics of climate, immigration, and purchasing power. Soon after their victory, however, treasurer and Senate leading candidate Henk Otten was forced to leave the party in a very public feud, with the party accusing Otten of stealing money and Otten accusing the party of shifting too far to the right. This public feud led to a decline in the polls, but Forum found the way back up and was polling in the high 10s by the beginning of 2020.

Then, the COVID pandemic started. First, Forum, together with the PVV, was accusing the government of doing way too little; then, it made a U-turn and started opposing all the COVID restrictions. This was a time in which there was still a broad national sense of unity, with a lot of group think and criticism being taboo. FVD were the party poopers. The result: decreasing polling numbers and unrest within the party, which had attracted all sorts of people interested in a political job. In November, antisemitic and otherwise 'problematic' text messages from youth wing members were (again) leaked, which caused many high-ranking members to lose their trust in Baudet, who had always backed the youth wing and called it the 'heart of the party'. The result: a crazy two weeks in which both sides were slinging spectacular amounts of mud towards each other, Baudet resigning as party leader in a Twitter video, Baudet demanding a referendum to come back as party leader in a Twitter video, and the well-known political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek (#5 on the provisional list for Parliament) stabbing Baudet in the back on live TV, with both being present in the show. In the end, the attempt to remove Baudet from power did not succeed as the board was split 2-2, and he won the referendum to stay on; most of those against him left and started JA21, including many members of the Provincial States, most Senators and the entire delegation in the European Parliament. Then, Baudet decided to go all in and center his entire campaign for the March 2021 election around opposing COVID restrictions. By then, the Netherlands was in the strictest lockdown and fatigue of the restrictions had become widespread. Forum was the only party actually campaigning "offline" and went through all of the country - including the most remote villages - with the "freedom caravan", a massive American truck. The 2021 election was another perfect storm and the party, whose necrologies had been written already, won 8 seats: a gain of 6.

But it was Forum's fate never to experience a period of calmness: two months after the election, 3 MPs left the party over a poster on Memorial Day claiming the Netherlands had known freedom from 1945 until 2020, and Baudet went all in on opposing vaccinations (not just semi-mandatory vaccination, but vaccinations altogether) - or, as they would say, "experimental gene therapy". As time passed by, this went hand in hand more and more often with comparisons with the 1930s and 40s, which a judge then forbade Baudet to do. Right when the COVID era ended, Forum embraced the next controversial cause: it supports the Russian invasion into Ukraine. Baudet claimed "Putin is a hero", "one of the best leaders of the European world", and that the invasion is "the most hopeful event I have experienced in my political life". This now goes together with support for Andrew Tate, 9/11 conspiracy theories, denial of the moonlanding, and RFK Jr - all very important themes in millions of Dutch people's daily lives, of course. At the same time, others in the party (the youth wing, first and foremost) are still focusing on more "conventional" themes for nationalist parties, such as combatting gender ideology and demographic replacement. But Baudet's support for Russia and opposition to NATO (which FVD now wants the Netherlands to leave) is on the forefront - and if it wasn't clear by now, Forum will have a very difficult time and are set to lose seats. By now, they have a fixed base of about 3% who will go through fire for them (Forum is still the Dutch party with the largest membership), but the other ±97% of society mostly detest them. They got 3% in the Provincial/Senate election earlier this year and I expect roughly the same performance in the November GE, maybe lower. But they will still definitely make it in.

From the right we move to the left: the Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD, Party for the Animals) steadily keeps winning seats. In 2006, they entered parliament under the charismatic and good-looking Marianne Thieme. From that point onwards, they just kept growing - first with a focus on animal cruelty and, really, any type of animals being used for the benefit of humans; but more recently with more focus on the climate. Although the PvdD reject the term left-wing, they are left-wing, and rather radical at that: they are opposed to the current economic system, opposed to growth, and supportive of the most ambitious of climate targets. Early on, it had two voter bases: alternative, alter-globalist, left-wing people who care about nature, and disaffected voters who love animals and actually agree mostly with the PVV on issues such as immigration. In 2019, Marianne Thieme resigned as party leader and there was a sense this could damage the party. But her successor Esther Ouwehand has proven the doubters wrong. Thieme was more of a "pro-animal activist" who did not like focusing on "human issues" too much, but Ouwehand is more conventionally left-wing, teaming up with BIJ1 on issues such as discrimination and turning the PvdD into more of a Climate Party - this is the issue they are now most vocal on. As a result, the party has lost most of its original animal-friendly protest voter base but expanded its support among highly educated people in the "Progressive Belt" (which runs diagonally from Alkmaar to Nijmegen) who believe GL are not radical enough on the climate - a demographic that is growing and growing. These days, the PvdD can get double digits in parts of inner-city Amsterdam and Utrecht, and things are looking good for them in the runup to the November GE. The most important question is: will they not lose too many voters if PvdA-GL have a realistic shot of becoming the biggest party? And the probable answer is: they will lose some potential voters, but still grow or remain stable compared to the 2021 election.

The ChristenUnie (CU, Christian Union) is also set to remain stable. Originally a merger of small, conservative Protestant parties (the "small Christian right"), the ChristenUnie has drifted sharply leftwards over the years - from an "SGP light" to a "Christian GroenLinks", you could almost say. From 2006 until 2010, they were part of the Balkenende-III government, together with CDA and PvdA. And from 2017 until last week, they were part of Rutte-III and Rutte-IV. The ChristenUnie are left-wing on immigration and climate, centrist on subjects such as socio-economic inequality, and conservative on issues like euthanasia, abortion, and drug legalization. They are also big on sin taxes and the strongest political force against prostitution. Government participation in Rutte-III and Rutte-IV has been difficult for them - the strategy of clearly showing the morally difficult decisions they have to make and the regret they feel over some decisions had a tendency of becoming a little pathetic and exhibitionist. It was former party leader Gert-Jan Segers' U-turn on prolonged cooperation with Rutte (first Segers refused, then he didn't) that enabled the formation of the last government in the first place. Segers has now been replaced by former Senator Mirjam Bikker, who scored points with the base by not giving in to the VVD on family reunification for war refugees (while CDA and D66 had already agreed to the VVD's demands), which led to the collapse of the government. Unlike the CDA, the CU seems to be a party with a future: its electoral base is made up of mainline to more conservative Christians in the rural "civic belt" (high trust, high participation), but also by a growing number of Christians with African and Middle Eastern descent. Prognosis: 4 to 7 seats.

Volt is a pan-European, centrist, socially liberal party that entered parliament two years ago. With Sigrid Kaag, D66 had become bigger than ever, but also a bit more focused on a voter base that was older and a little more suburban - a little more VVD, a little less GL. Volt filled the void: it is very popular with students and also an option for those who don't want to vote for an established party with all the baggage that comes with it. On all issues, Volt's stance is almost identical to that of D66 - the exception is that Volt are much more supportive of nuclear energy, which probably reflects their base: young people are much less likely to be opposed to it. While D66 and Volt agree on virtually everything, the focus is different: interestingly, for no clear reason, D66 has been giving less and less prominency to the issue of "Europe", which is Volt's core issue. After entering parliament they experienced a slight bump in the road, though: their leader Laurens Dassen, while good-looking, proved to be timid, academic, and reluctant to be controversial. But Nilüfer Gundogan, another MP, was highly visible. Due to her perceived undesirable behavior towards staffers and her fellow MP Marieke Koekkoek (who, according to Gündogan, "should have a shower more often"), however, Gündogan was dismissed from the parliamentary group. But by the time the Provincial elections took place, this had been forgotten already, and Volt performed well, winning 2 Senate seats - one of which taken by Eddy Hartog, who lives in Ireland, refuses to move back to the Netherlands, and will apparently receive financial compensation for travelling from his pied-a-terre in Brussels to The Hague every week... But with a rather shy Dassen, Gündogan gone, and GL-PvdA as solid competition (especially if they have EU hotshot Timmermans as PM candidate), Volt may have a problem standing out in the crowded field. Still, they should gain seats compared to 2021, which would allow them to increase their visibility in the next parliament.

[Cassius]

Best visualization of the Peil poll: green is scenario with Omtzigt party, red is scenario without Omtzigt party. Looks like the VVD pulling the plug on the government has actually helped them and Rutte stepping aside for Yesilgöz too, very interesting. BBB are losing to VVD and PVV.

Why do Omtzigt and BBB win so many more seats if they both run (at this stage) than BBB if it runs alone? Is the latter perceived as being too right-wing whereas Omtzigt appeals across the spectrum?

[DavidB.]

Why do Omtzigt and BBB win so many more seats together (at this stage) than BBB alone? Is the latter perceived as being too right-wing whereas Omtzigt appeals across the spectrum?

Yes, exactly.

[Хahar 🤔]

My sense is that the CU vote is somewhat less stable than the SGP vote, in that less of it is made up of voters who always vote CU at every election no matter what. What are voters who sometimes but not always vote CU like? I assume there are some CU/SGP swing voters, but how large a group is this? What sort of voters choose between CU and conventional parties, and which ones?

I am also confused by the Volt phenomenon given the existence of D66, although I guess this is mostly attributable to the lack of an electoral threshold. The Wikipedia page for the party leader states that he joined Volt because he was "unable to find an established political party that fit him"; I am not an expert on the Netherlands, but this seems perplexing to me given that a banker who identifies as "neither left nor right" should fit in at least half a dozen parties.

[Zinneke]

I'd say I've met people who would vote VOLT but would find D66 too stuffy, not exciting enough in terms of policy and also markedly more right wing on the political economy spectrum. VOLT do give off McKinsey faux progressive vibes and there was a journalist who remarked that a lot of their rank and file are consultants, D66 often seem to me more purely political types. It also depends on the branch you get though. I'd say of I were Dutch I'd consider my vote for them but never vote D66, which is weird because I voted D66 in a local election.

My main motivation for being a card carrying Volt member in Brussels though would be the endless free lunch events hosted by shady lobby groups their members work for and me liking eurocratic women in business attire.

[Harlow]

I didn't realize FvD and Baudet had gone that far off the deep end, but I can't say I'm surprised one bit.

I am also confused by the Volt phenomenon given the existence of D66, although I guess this is mostly attributable to the lack of an electoral threshold.

I would say that Volt making European federalism the core part of their party ideology, coupled with them actually having a Europe-wide party apparatus, makes them enticing to voters who have that as one of their main issues.

And as DavidB said, they have less baggage (although apparently still a bit of baggage based on their MPs feuding) than established parties with similar ideologies.

[DavidB.]

My sense is that the CU vote is somewhat less stable than the SGP vote, in that less of it is made up of voters who always vote CU at every election no matter what. What are voters who sometimes but not always vote CU like? I assume there are some CU/SGP swing voters, but how large a group is this? What sort of voters choose between CU and conventional parties, and which ones?

Yes, fully correct: the CU vote is less stable than the SGP vote. I have the impression (not corroborated by any data, but in general this sort of information would be difficult to find) that the number of CU/SGP swing voters has decreased over the years due to the CU's leftward turn and long participation in government - but they are still there. These are Protestant voters - mostly in the Bible Belt - who care about being pro-life and Israel, but may have more "modern" views on women's participation in politics and could be more open to the CU's message on immigration.

There are also CDA/CU swing voters, who are perhaps a little more religious than the CDA but don't subscribe to everything the CU do. And in that category, there are probably also small numbers of swing voters between CU and most other parties - people who are Christians, with both feet in modern life and not necessarily fully surrounded by Christians in daily life, and perhaps with a different set of priorities than CU (the Christian nurse who finds that the SP has the best profile on healthcare; the entrepreneur who thinks the VVD are the safest pair of hands on the economy) who can also vote CU because of their Christian profile.

I am also confused by the Volt phenomenon given the existence of D66, although I guess this is mostly attributable to the lack of an electoral threshold. The Wikipedia page for the party leader states that he joined Volt because he was "unable to find an established political party that fit him"; I am not an expert on the Netherlands, but this seems perplexing to me given that a banker who identifies as "neither left nor right" should fit in at least half a dozen parties.

When there is so much choice on the political market, it actually becomes more difficult to find a party as you raise your standards. In any normal country Dassen would be a perfectly happy member of their country's version of D66, but in the Netherlands you start your own party if you cannot subscribe for the full 100% to another. I attribute this to cultural Protestantism. When the Dutch wouldn't fully agree with their church, they would establish their own ones. It isn't any different with political parties. This is also the reason why there is so much infighting and splitting off in Dutch politics; of course, the system enabling this (with no threshold, as you said) does not help.

It is also worth noting that the best-known Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld has recently left D66 for Volt, partly due to D66's decreasing profile as Eurofederalist.

[YL]

When there is so much choice on the political market, it actually becomes more difficult to find a party as you raise your standards. In any normal country Dassen would be a perfectly happy member of their country's version of D66, but in the Netherlands you start your own party if you cannot subscribe for the full 100% to another. I attribute this to cultural Protestantism. When the Dutch wouldn't fully agree with their church, they would establish their own ones. It isn't any different with political parties. This is also the reason why there is so much infighting and splitting off in Dutch politics; of course, the system enabling this (with no threshold, as you said) does not help.

It strikes me as a largely predictable consequence of the electoral system.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

If the CDA really wanted to survive, could they bend the knee and let Omtzigt back in as leader?

[DavidB.]

If the CDA really wanted to survive, could they bend the knee and let Omtzigt back in as leader?

Theoretically they could, but I think there would be too much resistance among the party elite (these were the people using the worst curse words to describe him in their internal WhatsApp groups, they really hate him) and Omtzigt would never accept; he is very much traumatized by what happened. In fact, the main reason he doesn't want to join BBB is because he doesn't want to be surrounded by CDA people anymore, which most of them used to be.

But it is striking that we were only a few votes in the initial CDA leadership election away from a scenario in which Omtzigt had become party leader and would now probably be PM already.

[JimJamUK]

A few question for DavidB if he doesn’t mind:

Do the PvdD actually achieve anything? They don’t look able or really interested in entering government, but do they even get bills (especially animal ones) passed or anything like that?
Would the CU qualify as ‘Christian Left’ or is it just too right wing of a party for that description?
Could you explain more about GL’s views? On the previous page you quoted Klaver as arguing for the importance of social class and collectivism, which seems to jarr a bit with my impression of GL as an ultra progressive party focused on (to use an academic term) post-material issues.
Who votes for the PvdA these days?
Where are D66 and Volt economically these days?

[DavidB.]

JA21 (Correct Answer 21; "JA" also means "YES") is a right-wing anti-immigration party founded by MP Joost Eerdmans and Senator Annabel Nanninga - it is also a nameplay on the initials of the two founders. The official name of the party is "Conservative Liberals", which would make many Americans' heads spin, but is sort of a common term in the Dutch politics denoting a type of politics that used to be found on the right-wing side of the VVD. JA21 was founded by Forum for Democracy members who believed the party was beyond redemption. Their attempt to remove Thierry Baudet had not succeeded, so they left and started their own party. This needed to happen quickly: there were only four months to go before the March 2021 general election. JA21 was born and "inherited" seven Senators, three MEPs and a lot of Provincial States members - a force to be reckoned with. "Correct Answer" refers to the question: what party can right-wing voters vote for if they want a realistic party that can help establish a right-wing government? The idea is that there is a cordon sanitaire around PVV and FVD, which forces VVD and CDA to govern with more left-wing parties. But if right-wing voters opt for JA21, VVD and CDA lose this excuse and will have to form a right-wing government. In order to truly be this alternative, JA21 is not just "Forum for Democracy before 2020" but, in practice, a more watered down version, with a different tone of voice. The idea behind this is that VVD and CDA cannot be offered any excuse to claim JA21 is too radical. Unlike the PVV and FVD, they do not want to leave the EU.

In March 2021, JA21 succeeded in getting into Parliament and having its first officials elected on their own ticket rather than the FVD one. Joost Eerdmans was a former LPF MP and alderman for Leefbaar Rotterdam; Derk Jan Eppink was a journalist, a political commentator and an MEP; Nicki Pouw-Verweij holds a PhD in medicine and was a Senator for Forum before. JA21 had hoped for a kind of bandwagon effect similar to the growing popularity of FVD after their initial election to Parliament. Instead, BBB became the new right-wing hype and JA21 grew only moderately - but they don't seem unhappy with it, as they prefer more controlled growth and no unrest. Earlier this year, they won three Senate seats (i.e. a net loss of 4 from the ones they had inherited from FVD), the equivalent of six seats in Parliament - which is about exactly how they poll right now. Some unrest could not be prevented, however, as a number of high-level members (mostly belonging to the conservative faction, which focuses less on immigration) wrote an open letter to the party board deriding a lack of professionalism and a lack of internal democracy; the most prominent of them, MP Nicki Pouw-Verweij, announced this week she will not be a candidate on the JA21 list in the upcoming election. Critics ask what purpose JA21 still serves, with a VVD that seems to turn to the right and a PVV that could perhaps become coalitionable. But JA21 supporters would point out the VVD have reached record immigration, BBB are likely to implode because they are growing too fast, and the PVV will still not be in a coalition - therefore, JA21 would still be the Correct Answer. In any case, they should have a modest increase in seats - Omtzigt's participation would hurt them, but 4-6 seats should be attainable (interestingly, so far, their growth pattern is almost identical to that of Volt). And if the VVD truly turn right, participation in coalition doesn't seem unlikely either; even D66 does not exclude JA21.

The SGP (Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij; Reformed Political Party) is the oldest still existing Dutch party and belongs to the strictly Protestant mini-pillar in which TVs are taboo, rest on Sunday is strictly enforced, and women's participation in politics is frowned upon. The party is strictly pro-life, against euthanasia, pro-Israel. On most other issues, such as the economy, immigration and the EU, the party is situated to the right of VVD and CDA but to the left of the more populist parties; these days, apart from the ChristenUnie (with which the SGP have a very and increasingly ambiguous relationship), BBB and JA21 are the most natural allies. The SGP do not like to engage in the "modern type of politics" and do their work in a very old-fashioned way, not according to the opposition vs. coalition logic; they are sometimes called the "constitutional conscience" of Parliament. They have regularly saved ministers from being forced to resign by not supporting motions of no confidence which were supported by all of the opposition - except for the SGP. The world is changing and so is the SGP: they now have their first female elected officials and party leader Kees van der Staaij regularly joins TV shows. The SGP always win 2 or 3 seats - high turnout among the general public is bad for them, because their voters always vote - and will undoubtedly do so again.

DENK is a pro-immigrant party that seeks to highlight and combat discrimination, mostly against Muslims. Almost all of their elected officials and voters are Muslims; a rough estimation is that a third to half of Dutch Muslims vote DENK. The party was founded as a PvdA splitoff by MPs Tunahan Kuzu and Selçuk Öztürk. From the beginning, the party chose a very polarizing strategy (initiated by MP Öztürk), which included posting videos of MPs from other parties with a foreign background and scolding them for not acting in some sort of Muslim or Turkish interest. In 2017, they won three seats, for Kuzu, Öztürk and Farid Azarkan. After an internal crisis which looked like the end of the party, however, there was a leadership change, with Azarkan taking over. The party's tone became much more reconciling - from "Muslim PVV" to "Muslim CDA" - and Öztürk was replaced by Stephan van Baarle (who is half Turkish) in the 2021 election, in which they maintained their three seats after a more low-profile campaign. DENK became a lot less visible after changing strategies, however, and lost all of its provincial seats in the 2023 Provincial elections. Still, they are the default option for many Muslim voters if they vote at all - which they will do more often in a first-order election. The party is particularly popular among younger Muslims, a growing part of the electorate. Interestingly, one of the competitors for these voters is Forum for Democracy: according to an opinion pollster, about 10% of young Muslims consider voting for FVD and some of them were DENK voters before. DENK's weak point with these voters is clearly their quiet, aloof, but rather tolerant stance on issues regarding LGBT and gender - issues on which their base is a lot more conservative, and DENK has recently moved more in that direction too. On other themes, they are rather standard Social Democratic, with a lot of focus on Muslim interests in foreign policy (Palestinians, Uyghurs, Rohingya, Bosnia). They should be able to win 2 or 3 seats again.

50Plus are proof for the fact that a strong brand name can get you very far. Every few years, they undergo a massive political crisis, with people splitting off left and right. Former MP Henk Krol was a very strong debater and made them a relevant political force, but has left the scene. Now, not many people are left and the project seems largely given up. Their only elected official on the national level is Senator Martin van Rooijen (80). They also had nobody Liane den Haan, who was elected to parliament in 2021 only because of the brand name, but she "split off" (i.e. left the party and the brand name) less than two months after being elected - she had developed a completely different point of view on the most important topic for 50Plus voters: the pension age, which she now thinks should go up. Talk about betraying your voters. On other topics Den Haan (also) voted similar to D66, while 50Plus voters are much more likely to hold views closer to the PVV. Den Haan won't return, obviously - but don't be surprised if they still win a seat. All thanks to the brand name, of course.

[DavidB.]

Do the PvdD actually achieve anything? They don’t look able or really interested in entering government, but do they even get bills (especially animal ones) passed or anything like that?

They would say they are mostly there to push the Overton window towards a set of views in which "radical" points of view regarding the climate, animals, and economic growth become accepted. But occasionally they also get things done: they got a majority for some of their amendments on the Law on Animals in 2021, which now states natural behavior of animals should always be the standard when holding animals, which has all sorts of consequences - so much so that multiple Ministers for Agriculture have refused to implement it, because it would be the end of livestock farming.

Would the CU qualify as ‘Christian Left’ or is it just too right wing of a party for that description?

I don't think they would embrace the term Left, but in practice I think it is difficult to dispute that their views are largely Christian and largely left-wing, albeit center-left. Make of that what you will. I tend to call them "GroenLinks with the Bible", but that would be a polemical thing to say from someone with a right-wing point of view.

Could you explain more about GL’s views? On the previous page you quoted Klaver as arguing for the importance of social class and collectivism, which seems to jarr a bit with my impression of GL as an ultra progressive party focused on (to use an academic term) post-material issues.

Klaver has a past in the labor movement and has always connected the two issues, Groen and Links. Their voters may be more green, but the party itself has usually had a rather strong economically left stance (except for the Halsema era, who was more of a liberal). But of course, Klaver's essay was meant for him to explain why he had become a member of the PvdA, so it is logical for him to highlights issues regarding the distribution of wealth and class issues in such a piece. I personally think the merger makes perfect sense from the GL point of view, as the party will resemble them more than the PvdA; for the latter, however, it is more dubious.

Who votes for the PvdA these days?

Older people. Their base has aged just as much as the CDA base; in 2021, more than 33% of their voters were 70 years old and almost 70% of their voters were over 50. Some of them are working-class; others are civil servants or teachers. The common theme would be that they have always voted PvdA.

Where are D66 and Volt economically these days?

In the political center, I would say; a left-winger would say they are center-right, a right-winger would say they are center-left. Under influence of the times, the current tendency is for them to move leftwards. But in government with the VVD, this may not be visible, and they would probably be more willing to give it up than GL/PvdA.

I'd say I've met people who would vote VOLT but would find D66 too stuffy, not exciting enough in terms of policy and also markedly more right wing on the political economy spectrum. VOLT do give off McKinsey faux progressive vibes and there was a journalist who remarked that a lot of their rank and file are consultants, D66 often seem to me more purely political types. It also depends on the branch you get though. I'd say of I were Dutch I'd consider my vote for them but never vote D66, which is weird because I voted D66 in a local election.

Yup, I also know quite some Volt voters with very different motivations: some coming from the VVD, some from GL and some from D66. Some do it because of the pro-nuclear point of view, some because they thought Volt would be D66 but "less woke" (which it didn't turn out to be) or "more right-wing" (which it also doesn't really seem to be). The common theme is that Volt has no history and it can therefore be what you want it to be. Another theme is definitely their focus on Europe.

Another way to view it: few people care more about social status than highly educated young people, and Volt is now the "cool vote" to mention at a party. In 2017 this was GL; before that, D66.

[Estrella]

Is drug trafficking considered a major problem, as Lubach seems to think? Does anyone have proposals to do something about it?

[Logical]

Calling CU "GroenLinks with the Bible" is ironic since 2 of the 4 parties that merged to form GL were Christian left and ecologist parties. I do wonder how large the Christian left vote is now and how they split.

[DavidB.]

Is drug trafficking considered a major problem, as Lubach seems to think? Does anyone have proposals to do something about it?

It is a problem, and most people would probably consider it a problem - but it does not receive much attention, which leads me to concluding most people do not consider it to be a major problem. On multiple occasions, Justice Minister and soon-to-be VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz has voiced her annoyance with the relative lack of anger in Dutch society over this type of crime, which is euphemistically named "undermining crime" in the Netherlands. There are a number of factors that make it very unrealistic for the problem to be solved, though: some of the most important are the Dutch geographic location at the heart of Europe with Rotterdam as one of the biggest ports; our open borders to the rest of Europe; the relatively low acceptance of more anti-drug policies; and the massive amount of funds drug cartels have vis-a-vis the very low capacity of police and customs authorities. The murder cases of crime journalist Peter R. de Vries and lawyer Derk Wiersum caused a brief shock wave, but were largely viewed as incidents, not as the tip of an iceberg that corrupts much more of society.

Left-wing/progressive parties think the solution is the legalization of drugs, and while I am not necessarily opposed to it, I don't think it solves the problem - most of the drugs produced in and imported to the Netherlands are not for the domestic Dutch market in the first place. Legalizing drugs may have positive effects domestically, but is unlikely to change this dynamic. On the other hand, it is also an illusion that a total war on drugs (which would have low support among the population) could seriously solve the problem.

Calling CU "GroenLinks with the Bible" is ironic since 2 of the 4 parties that merged to form GL were Christian left and ecologist parties. I do wonder how large the Christian left vote is now and how they split.

The question is how you define "Christian Left". The Christian (PPR, EVP) DNA is almost completely gone from GL, although there is still a committee named The Left Cheek for "Christian Left" GL members. Outside GL, CU should come closest. I would say these are the two main parties for people who are left-wing from a Christian perspective. It is a very small segment of society, though.

[DavidB.]

We have arrived at the last two parties represented in Parliament - I will also write a description of the one other party pollsters say may make it in, and of the one party that could be founded and become the biggest party.

BBB (BoerBurgerBeweging; FarmerCitizenMovement) is a party primarily representing farmer's interests, led by former CDA member Caroline van der Plas. The farmer's protest movement has its roots in a ruling by the Council of State, the highest court of the Netherlands, according to which the system of granting permits that emit nitrogens is deemed to be not in line with EU law. This started the so-called "nitrogen crisis", which led to the government imposing the strictest nitrogen emissions rules in all of Europe. D66 won the negotiations on nitrogens for the Rutte-IV government and VVD minister Van der Wal is carrying out this policy, which aims to reduce nitrogen emissions by 50% in 2035 (and wanted to bring this deadline forward to 2030, which now failed because of the collapse of the government).

On the one hand, environmentalists claim nature in the densely populated Netherlands has been neglected and a massive reduction of livestock farming is needed to save biodiversity. On the other hand, opponents of the government's policies point out that the "biodiversity" that needs to be saved is rather arbitrary (i.e. the types of nature that most people would appreciate as nature, such as forests, are not the types this nitrogen legislation is aimed to "save"), that the Netherlands is a densely populated country in which nature is always man-made, and that reaching such strict nitrogen targets as the government aims for is almost impossible.

All of this sparked massive farmers' protests from 2019 onwards. Former CDA members teamed up with some large business owners in the agricultural sector and founded BBB. Its entry into parliament (1 seat, 1% of the vote) was a surprise for me, who lived in a big Western Dutch city, but is in hindsight very logical. I saw Caroline van der Plas for the first time the day after the election, when footage of her driving a tractor into the square in front of Parliament made every TV show. From that moment onwards, Van der Plas was everywhere. She talks like she could be your neighbor, down-to-earth and reasonable, and became the new darling of the evening talkshows - helped by government targets deemed too extreme by the majority of the population. In rural areas, there is a massive sense of being forgotten by the government - a result of depillarization, the collapse of the people's parties, and the increasing gap (also in terms of status) of those with higher education and those without. In this way, the farmers' protests don't just stand for farmers - they also stand for a larger type of disaffection with "The Haque", which feels worlds away from the rural Netherlands. In the summer of 2022, post-COVID, farmers' protests started again. All over the rural Netherlands and alongside the highway, you could see Dutch flags upside down - standing for the idea that the Netherlands is undergoing a great calamity. In the meantime, BBB was building up its profile and reaching out to the public beyond the agricultural sector. It stands for a "naoberstaat", literally "neighborship state", an Eastern Dutch word that carries small-c conservative associations about community, but also a connotation of representing parts of the country whose way of speaking is derided in the West.

All of this culminated into a massive election win in the Provincial and Senate elections earlier this year. BBB became the largest party in all 12 provinces, including the ones in the urbanized West; about half of their voters live in suburbs, towns or cities. Since the PS election, they have declined in the polls slightly - but they are still on course for a massive result in November, and Caroline van der Plas could be the next Prime Minister. The question is still: does she want to be the party's PM candidate? She hasn't decided yet. Another question is: will Pieter Omtzigt run? He has a similar profile (expounded on later in this post) and, unlike Van der Plas, is seen as a good PM candidate by about half of the population. A third question: where will Van der Plas find 30 to 40 good candidates for Parliament, and how does she prevent an LPF/FVD scenario in which the party implodes? Regionally, BBB have entered coalitions of all types, including ones with GL/PvdA where she could have built a right-wing coalition. On a national level, this would seem a lot more difficult. Logical partners would be VVD, CDA, JA21 (whose views the party resembles, just not in terms of focus; albeit a little less anti-immigration) and - indeed - SP, the left-wing party Van der Plas wants to include. BBB will also have to realize they receive many of their voters "on loan" from more right-wing parties, such as the PVV - a bad stint in government and they could be back. Interesting times ahead.

BIJ1 is an intersectionalist, far-left, minority interests party led by former TV anchorwoman Sylvana Simons. Officially the party does not use the term communist, but high-ranking members have embraced the label. Anticolonialism and anti-discrimination are on top of the party's agenda - Simons' parliamentary debate contribution on apologizing for the Dutch role in slavery caused multiple parties to change their views on this. The party has been plagued by infighting, however; in Amsterdam this has led to accusations of "anti-black racism" vs "Islamophobia" and the #2 on the 2021 list, Quinsy Gario, is now persona non grata. This also meant that Sylvana Simons, the party leader, could not resign even when suffering from chronic pain and being absent from parliament a lot: this would have meant the loss of their only seat. BIJ1 is surprisingly invisible (probably also related to Simons' illness, however) and hasn't managed to garner much more support than in 2021 - I had expected them to be more successful. Still, Simons should be sufficiently widely appreciated within black communities and within the far-left community to make it in again, perhaps with a compagnon. Prognosis: 1-2 seats.

Party not elected in 2021 that may make it in:

Belang van Nederland (BVNL, Interest of the Netherlands; wordplay: "BV" is the official legal name of a common type of business in the Netherlands, so the implication is also that the Netherlands should be run like a business) is the second parliamentary splitoff from Forum for Democracy. 3 out of the 8 FVD MPs left just two months after being elected because they could not subscribe to a statement implying the freedom won back in 1945 was lost again in 2020. The only visible BVNL MP is Wybren van Haga, who became very popular during the COVID pandemic by being opposed to the restrictions without entering the world of conspiracy theories too much. In the 2021 election, he received almost as many votes as Thierry Baudet and was riding a high in terms of social media attention. But after splitting off, BVNL seems sort of lost. Wybren van Haga is a classical liberal who was a VVD MP before he was in FVD, and he would like the party to be like the VVD in the 1990s. But their supporters mostly like Van Haga because of his COVID criticism and hold very different views. The party leader has to pander to his supporters, while he also wants to stay true to his classical liberal convictions (but uses a populist tone). Van Haga is also a landlord who has received negative media attention over his treatment of tenants; his bad image does not help the party in attracting more supporters. The other two MPs are invisible; one of them is chronically ill. Wybren van Haga's massive social media following could still earn him one seat - the PS elections were a disaster for them, but on these numbers, Van Haga would still get in. Two seats seems impossible and BVNL seems to be a party for which even the Dutch system has no place in the long run: too schizophrenic in terms of substance, too much baggage in terms of history, too much competition in terms of demand. Prognosis: 0 or 1 seat.

Party not (yet) founded, but if founded, could win the election:

The biggest question surrounding the November election is: will he run or won't he? Obviously we are talking about Pieter Omtzigt here. Omtzigt holds a PhD in econometrics and entered parliament in 2003 on the CDA ticket. He steadily rose within the ranks, but was refused a new candidacy in 2012, allegedly because of his opposition to their previous cooperation with the PVV in the Rutte-I government - but also, probably, because the leadership found him to be too critical and too annoying in general. But with a campaign among CDA members in Twente, his region in the East of the country, the party agreed to placing him on the list - at slot #39. However, with another personal campaign, Omtzigt received 36,750 preferential votes - only a little over 15,000 were needed. In his region alone, he already received more than 27k preferential votes. From this point onwards, his life in the CDA did not get easier - he also started devoting more time to his membership in the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, in which he did important investigative work into the murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Later, Omtzigt was one of the three MPs (together with Renske Leijten, SP, and Farid Azarkan, DENK) who, through constant and heavy questioning, managed to find out about the scale of the childcare subsidies scandal, in which tens of thousands of parents were falsely accused of fraud with subsidies; their lives were destroyed with massive debts and some of their children were taken away. The government and his own CDA wanted Omtzigt to stop his work on this, but he refused to do so. In 2020, he ran for the party leadership and - in a potentially fraudulent election - lost to Hugo de Jonge; Omtzigt's own wife received a message "Thank you for your vote for Hugo de Jonge" after voting for Omtzigt, which doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence... In the 2021 campaign, Omtzigt's status was so big that the party could no longer sideline him or treat him disrespectfully in public, but the party elite hated his guts - leaked WhatsApp messages show he was called "psychopath", "sick man", "asshole", "insane" and "mentally unstable" in additions to rumors about him being "depressed".

After the 2021 election, D66 minister Kajsa Ollongren was one of the two persons responsible for holding initial talks on the formation of a new government. One morning, she found out she had been tested positive for COVID and she hurried out of the building, into her car, while holding her notes towards the outside. An alert photographer took a picture and within an hour, all of the country had read the notes - including the sentence Position Omtzigt, function elsewhere - Omtzigt was seen as a destabilizing factor for any potential coalition with the CDA and should be offered a position so that this critical voice does not get too annoying, was the idea. Then the people involved did some rounds of lying about who had said what and who had remembered what, with a bad role for both Mark Rutte and Wopke Hoekstra, which placed the government formation of Rutte-IV under a great amount of additional pressure. Omtzigt then left the CDA and continued as an independent MP, and polls unsurprisingly showed he was the single most popular politician in the Netherlands whose potential establishment of a new party would shake up everything.

On the issues, Omtzigt's profile has large similarities with both CDA and BBB, but is less pronouncedly right-wing - in fact, you could say Omtzigt is right at the center of Dutch politics. Issues he cares about are better governance, transparency, taxes, pensions, a fair treatment of more peripherical areas, the European Union (of which he is more skeptical than the CDA), and the position of oppressed Christians, particularly in the Middle East. If he starts his own party, cooperation with the CDA would seem impossible - but with Rutte gone, the VVD should be an option, and so should BBB, JA21, and the SP be. But how will Omtzigt manage to find enough candidates who are competent and loyal? Some say he should only take part in the "electoral region" of Overijssel. Others say he should go all in. If I had to place my bets, I think the most likely next Prime Minister of the Netherlands is Pieter Omtzigt.

[DavidB.]

87.9% of PvdA members and 91.8% of GL members voted for a joint list and a joint manifesto.

Meanwhile, BIJ1 in Amsterdam have lost the two seats they had left after an earlier split: there has now been another round of infighting, in which accusations of "toxic behavior" and a "structurally unsafe environment" were coined. BIJ1 started off with 1 seat in Amsterdam; from that perspective, this loss is both painful and symbolic, and it does not bode well for their future. The council members who split off criticize party leader and MP Sylvana Simons for remaining aloof and not caring enough about their view regarding social safety within the party.

And in the VVD, former MP André Bosman retracted his candidacy for leader, leaving Dilan Yesilgöz as the only one in the "race" that never was. Going to go ahead and assume Bosman was offered some cushy job in exchange, perhaps he'll come back as an MP. Also going to go ahead and assume this was Bosman's plan all along, as surely he knew this entire internal democracy thing is just window dressing.

[YL]

If Omtzigt does form a list and get a lot of MPs elected, what are the chances that they continue to form a coherent group for the whole term?