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

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Psychologically quite a big boost for them, I presume?

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Just when you thought Dutch politics couldn't get anymore ridiculous. Amazing stuff.

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I think we could do without describing female politicians as prostitutes, on balance.

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RIP HP

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Ah, the Joop den Uyl tribute act strategy.

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Meanwhile, in the LOLnews department: the invisible BVNL MP Olaf Ephraim has split off from his party after being denied a spot on the candidate list. This means we now have a record 21 parliamentary groups. It is completely unclear why Van Haga didn't simply give him spot #3 and called it a day, because they will never get 3 seats. Ephraim retaliated with a spree of bellicose messages in an internal BVNL WhatsApp group, which have of course leaked. He implies he will now debate Van Haga as much as possible in parliament during the budget debates in September.

No relation, ftr.

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So... the SP but for genepool Freethinkers rather than genepool Catholics?

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There are less posters in most countries these days. I suppose it reflects that there's less absolute loyalty towards particular political parties now.

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If there was a PM from a party other than the largest, this would be for the first time in forty years.

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Are there any countries where TV debates have such a provably huge impact on election results as the Netherlands? This isn't even the first time something like this has happened.

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Looks like it would be very difficult to form a government-what's the pathway from this?

If it is genuinely impossible, then fresh elections. If it is just about possible, then a weak government (though there are different ways in which it might be week) which staggers on for a while (a year or so? Two?) before fresh elections.

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I remember being amused at a rather understated description of their 2010.result - that it was "disappointing". In hindsight I suppose it looks good.

The genepool has left the mother party and found a new home. Odd when this happens.

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This is the second election in a row in which the combined score of the left parties was under a quarter of the vote. There was also no obvious sign of a serious recovery in those places where the collapse over the past decade has been particularly severe. This should prompt serious reflection at the very least (and as to that matter, well, my general views would not be a secret), but I suspect that it won't.

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PVV took 33% in Oldambt, parts of which were a CPN stronghold back in the old days.

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There's a famous joke in Yes Minister about how if you accept a job at the European Commission, then your political career at home is over and that you'll have to start your own party if you want to come back. This, of course, was a very specific joke at the expense of Roy Jenkins, but the general principle...

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Something to bear in mind for most Western European countries (and a few other places) there is a clear distinction between the social democratic electorate and the 'progressive' (for want of a better term) one, and that this is true both in terms of their potential maximum size and reach as for their respective cores.* The two are not naturally opposed as such and can combine relatively well (though a degree of friction is inevitable), but they are not simply two branches of the same tree: it cannot be assumed that an appeal to the one will necessarily appeal to the other; the very opposite is often true. In a majoritarian electoral system it becomes a matter of balance, but this shouldn't be necessary when proportional electoral systems are used: it would have surely made more sense to have one party put forward a strong social democratic message and for another party to put forward a strong 'progressive' message and for the pair of them to then work together afterwards. This would also have made more sense as far as the narrower question of rescuing the PvdA brand is concerned: until the disastrous Samsom leadership, the PvdA had a clear function in the political system and one of the strangest and most tellingly disturbing things about how things have panned out subsequently is that there seems little awareness that it is this loss of function that has devastated the party.

_{*For people who are, like me, sufficiently sad enough to be in Fabian/FES/etc circles this will all be extremely familiar - familiar to the point of actual cliché - but most posters here are not.}