Elections in the Netherlands (again)

old europe wrote:

There are elections in the Netherlands today. People there can vote via the internet, and about one third of eligible voters are said to have gone on the internet to check which party fits them best. Politicians are concerned about the influence the internet has.

I have a feeling that nimh will be here soon to let people know that he, too, voted on the internet.

Were you being ironic, or had you not read the previous two posts? Laughing

Yes, there were elections in the Netherlands today! I've been patiently updating this thread with some campaign news, a lot of polling graphs, and posts about the various political shifts these elections demonstrated, But tonight, on election night, I clunked out I'm afraid. Unbelievably, I just went to the movies with friends - and when I came home at half past midnight, I found out that my cable internet wasnt working.

So Ive come to this cafe across the road to actually look up what the results have been! And interesting they are, indeed. Unfortunately, they've already called last orders here, and will be closing in a minute, so I cant update any of you who might still have been following this thread anymore.

But I will translate the overall results that Walter so kindly already posted though:

IN SEATS

PARTIES LISTED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

Code:

                                   2006 (2003)



Socialists                          26    +17



Green Left                           7    - 1



Labour                              32    -10



Party for the Animals                2    + 2



Democrats66                          3    - 3



Christian Union                      6    + 3



Christian-Democrats                 41    - 3



VVD (Rightwing Liberals)            22    - 6



State Reformed Party                 2    n.c.



List Pim Fortuyn                     0    - 8



Party of Freedom (Geert Wilders)     9    + 9

IN PERCENTAGES

PARTIES LISTED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

Code:

                                   2006 



Socialists                         16,6%    



Green Left                          4,6%    



Labour                             21,2% 



Party for the Animals               1,8%    



Democrats66                         2,0%



Christian Union                     4,0%



Christian-Democrats                26,6%



VVD (Rightwing Liberals)           14,6%



State Reformed Party                1,6%



List (Pim) Fortuyn                  0,2%



Party of Freedom (Geert Wilders)    5,9%

1 Reply

"Europe" has hardly been an issue in the elections, so I hadnt made the connection myself, but they're right:

Quote:

De Volkskrant, for example, says it is no coincidence that the parties that made the most gains (the socialist SP, the anti-immigration PvdV, and the Christian Union) are the very same parties that successfully campaigned against the European Constitution last year.

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THE BIG CITIES

An overview about the results in the four big cities of the Netherlands.

One striking thing that should be added first off: in all of these four cities, the Labour Party does better than on national average. No surprise there; the large cities, and especially Amsterdam and Rotterdam, have long histories as Labour strongholds. The large concentration of minority voters, who overwhelmingly went for Labour, won't have hurt either. But its leftwing competitor, the Socialist Party, does not actually do better in these four cities than nationwide; it only does average.

The Socialists have their strongholds regionally (in the former coalmining areas of Southern Limburg, for example, or in the East of Brabant), and in smaller cities. Two notable "scalps" they took were Eindhoven, the country's fifth city I believe, and Nijmegen, both in the Catholic South - in both cities, the Socialists sensationally became the largest party. They might also have done well in suburbs and commuter towns, I havent looked up enough detail to know yet.

A decisive element here is surely that, while nationally Labour got 21% and the Socialists 17%, among ethnic minority voters (Moroccans, Turks, Surinamese etc), the proportions were much more lopsided. According to a survey by Foquz Ethnomarketing, 45% of minority voters chose Labour, and 20% the Socialist Party.

AMSTERDAM

Holland's capital city Amsterdam remains overwhelmingly leftwing, as it has been reliably even throughout the tumultuous last five years. More than two-thirds of the voters here opt for a leftwing party.

In this city with a rich industrial past, two universities, and most of the country's cultural elite, both Labour and the Green Left and Democrats do well above average here. Labour and the Socialist Party are the two largest parties. The "red-green" parties, Labour, Socialists and Green Left, together pool 61% of the vote, and the wider left, counting the Democrats and the Party for the Animals as well, comes to 69%.

The Christian-Democrats do extremely badly here. In spite of a series of multicultural 'problem neighbourhoods', the far right Freedom Party actually scores below the national average.

Code:



Labour Party             30% (- 8)



Socialist Party          18% (+ 9)



VVD (Rightwing-Liberal)  14% (- 2)



Green Left               13% (+ 2)



Christian-Democrats      10% (n.c.)



Democrats                 5% (- 3)



Freedom Party             5% (+ 5)



Party for the Animals     3% (+ 3)



Christian Union           2% (+ 1)



List Fortuyn              0% (- 6)

ROTTERDAM

In Rotterdam, the workerist harbour city, the Socialist Party made double digit gains, making the Labour and Socialist Parties the two largest parties in the city. Even in light of Rotterdam's traditionally solid social-democratic past, that is a striking result, and all the more so because for the past five years, Rotterdam has been the centre of the Fortuynist revolution.

This is the city Pim Fortuyn lived in; it was here that his "Livable Rotterdam" party swept all parties aside in the 2002 local elections, grabbing a frontrunning 35% of the vote and pushing long-reigning Labour down to a humiliating 22%. Even in the rerun earlier this year, when Labour succeeded in snatching back power over local government, Livable Rotterdam retained a respectable 30% of the vote, with another 16% going to other rightwing parties. It was here that Fortuynist policies of law and order and enforced integration were tried out for four years, in turn influencing the national government's VVD Minister of Integration and Immigration Rita Verdonk.

Moreover, one of the leaders of Livable Rotterdam, former alderman Marco Pastors, actually took part in the national elections this year with his own list, OneNL.

But OneNL flopped, gathering less than 1% nationally and a humbling 3% in Rotterdam. The far-right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders did significantly better, scoring well over the national average, but even the Freedom Party, OneNL and Verdonk's VVD added up together didn't even approach the score of Livable Rotterdam earlier this year. The VVD scored weakly, and the Christian-Democrats lousy, in comparison with national averages.

Instead, with Labour doing far better than nationally, the "red-green" Left got 52%, recalling the good old days of social-democratic dominance of the eighties and before, and the wider left got 58%.

Code:



Labour Party             29% (- 7)



Socialist Party          18% (+11)



Christian-Democrats      14% (n.c.)



VVD (Rightwing-Liberal)  12% (- 3)



Freedom Party             9% (+ 9)



Green Left                5% (- 1)



Democrats                 3% ( -1)



One NL                    3% (+ 3)



Christian Union           3% (+ 1)



Party for the Animals     3% (+ 2)



List Fortuyn              0% (-13)

THE HAGUE

The Hague is a city traditionally divided. As residence of the government, much of the city has an affluent and rather stodgy, bourgois character, which contrasts sharply with its rather rowdy "other half". Political results therefore tend to be more evenly balanced than in other cities, and this year is no exception.

The Left did gain a few percentage points, however, with "red-green" going from 43% to 46%. The wider left now stands at 53%. On the other side, the far right Freedom Party also did clearly better in The Hague than nationally, the same way the List Pim Fortuyn did last time.

The Christian-Democrats meanwhile score well below national average here too, but the rightwing liberal VVD again did well here. With a pooled 35% for the two of them, The Hague therefore brought the government parties the best result of the four main cities.

Code:



Labour Party             26% (- 5)



VVD (Rightwing-Liberal)  18% (- 4)



Christian-Democrats      17% (- 1)



Socialist Party          15% (+ 9)



Freedom Party             8% (+ 8)



Green Left                6% (- 1)



Democrats                 4% (- 2)



Party for the Animals     3% (+ 2)



Christian Union           2% (+ 1)



OneNL                     1% (+ 1)



List Fortuyn              0% (- 9)

UTRECHT

Utrecht, traditionally a stronghold of left-liberal politics (the Democrats and the Green Left usually do very well here), bucked the trend somewhat in not yielding the left any extra ground. The Socialists won here, too, but not more than Labour lost.

The "red-green" Left as a whole remained stable at 53%, and the wider left at 60%. That's still clearly above the national average (43% for the red-green Left and 47% for the wider left), but the Christian-Democrats held their ground here, and the VVD lost less than average.

True to its relatively affluent, university town left-liberalism, both the Green Left and the Democrats retained far above-average results; whereas the far right Freedom Party actually scored less well in this fourth city of the country than in the country as a whole. As in all the major cities, the Christian-Democrats performed well below average.

Code:



Labour Party             25% (- 7)

 

Christian-Democrats      17% (n.c.) 



Socialist Party          16% (+ 7)



VVD (Rightwing-Liberal)  14% (- 2)



Green Left               12% (n.c.)



Democrats                 5% (- 2)



Freedom Party             5% (+ 5)



Christian Union           3% (+ 2)



Party for the Animals     2% (+ 2)



List Fortuyn              0% (- 5)

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The NRC Handelsblad has a series of photos, one from each of the different parties' election night meetings.

They make for an interesting game of "seek the differences"..

The Labour Party:

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/Wouter_Bos__PvdA__i_124959e.jpg

In his speech, Labour leader Wouter Bos gives the gathered party members the message that the glass is half full. Labour may have lost, but the opposition to the rightwing government has won. The voters have "massively said no to this cold and harsh Netherlands."

67-year old Martine Verbeek, lifelong Labour member, says, "I've come to support Wouter. Since my husband is dead, he is my man." She gets to pass on a rose for him.

The rightwing liberal VVD:

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/VVD_verkiezingen_Ma_124953e.jpg

Note that the photographer has neatly zoomed in on the only two young, hip, jeans-clad minority-background guys in the crowd.. the only people, also, apparently, who've actually put the orange VVD t-shirt on, rather than sling it over tie and jacket.

The Christian-Democrats, of all people (no photo), were apparently more hip: "Christian-Democrat youth is again - it's almost a familiar feature now - walking around in t-shirts with the image of Prime Minister Balkenende as Che Guevara."

The crowds there also chanted - in English -"Four more years", but that will not be as easy as it seems. Balkenende has won the elections in that his party is easily the largest. But there is no more majority for his rightwing government, nor for any of the possible permutations - Christian-Democrats, rightwing liberals and the far right, Christian-Democrats, rightwing liberals and the small Christian parties. And for only the second time in electoral history, the Christian-Democrats and Labour together also dont have a majority. Nor, on the other hand, do the leftwing parties.

At the Christian-Democratic meeting, too, indirect praise for the Socialists - even though Socialist leader Marijnissen and Balkenende are on opposite sides, MP Jan de Vries says, they "have in common that they are stable persons". The voter has appreciated that.

The Socialist Party:

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/Juichende_aanhanger_124941e.jpg

The news that the SP will be bigger than the rightwing liberals of the VVD is raucously greeted. "22 November is a historic day for the SP and for the Netherlands," party leader Jan Marijnissen booms on the stage. "This is the day on which the socials have passed the liberals!"

A 37-year old activist says, "The Labour Party has faltered. People are really fed up. Iraq, the EU. All the other parties have a weak attitude, only the SP doesnt." The party has profited from the presence of its activists on the street. "The SP was the only party in the neighbourhood you could always go to. If you need support, the SP is simply there. I've been long cynical about politics, but I found out that the SP does a lot for people." The SP campaign song resounds in the background: "With Jan and everyone and the whole SP, we are sure, things can be more social. Now, SP!"

The Freedom Party (Group Wilders):

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/Geert_Wilders_na_ee_124955e.jpg

Geert Wilders is promising to work for "less Islam, tax cuts and a more decent Netherlands".

The Green Left:

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/gl_124964e.jpg

The girl's t-shirt, the newspaper helpfully explains, says "Respect" in Arabic. Party leader Femke Halsema asks the gathered activists to give an applause for the Socialist Party and its victory. "It looks like a political earthquake has taken place, and the earthquake is called SP."

The Christian Union:

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/Andr__Rouvoet_en_de_124967e.jpg

Christian Union leader Andre Rouvoet muses about how, "with the Christian Union, a centre-left coalition of Christian-Democrats and Labour could be a social-christian coalition". Though the party had been buoyed by favourable polls in the campaign, it's not the polls that pulled them through, he adds, "it's the Blessing".

The campaign evening, attended by a conspicuously young and enthusiastic public, was closed with the national anthem.

The Democrats 66:

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/Spanning_op_de_gezi_124956e.jpg

The Party for the Animals:

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00124/Marianne_Thieme_str_124963e.jpg

Party leader Marianne Thieme calls the two seats the party won "a breakthrough for the animal", an international first that will spread as an "oil spill" to other countries. The party's number three expresses satisfaction that with the leftwing parties, the Democrats and the Christian Union, there is now an "animal-friendly" majority.

The party's first concrete action will be to try to stop the unanesthetized castration of pigs.

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A government with the Christian Union?

Talks about forming a new government coalition between the largest party, the Christian-Democrats, the big election victor, the Socialist Party, and the Labour Party (as 'bridge' between the two), have collapsed relatively swiftly. Both Christian Democratic leader Balkenende and Socialist leader Marijnissen concluded after informal negotiations that the programmatic differences between the two parties are too large to make co-operation feasible. Balkenende also was not too eager to enter a government where his party would be faced with two leftwing parties that together far outnumbered his people (the three parties together were good for two-thirds of the vote).

Now formal negotiations will begin about another combination: Christian-Democrats, Labour and the small Christian Union. Labour Party leader Wouter Bos, who in his turn is loath to be the minority partner in a Christian, centre-right government, also still wants to involve the Green Left in negotiations, but chances of that are slim. Numerically, the Greens are not necessary: Christian-Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union together already have a majority of 78 out of 150 seats.

If the negotiations succeed, it would be a first: neither the Christian Union, nor the two parties that merged into it several years ago, have ever been in government. In previous decades, there was sometimes talk of a "Staphorst coalition" that could help a rightwing government to a majority if it would narrowly fail to get one, but the occasion never arose. It was called the "Staphorst version" after a small, extremely religious, protestant town in the East of the country, where the Christian Union and the even more orthodox (and tiny) State Reformed Party pool half of the vote.

Today's Christian Union is not comparable to the "small right", as the small orthodox protestant parties used to be called, of the eighties though. It has moved significantly to the centre - or perhaps politics has moved to the right. As issues like abortion and gay marriage became disappeared behind the political horizon, the right to both having been formly established, the new Christian Union focused more and more on other Christian issues - development aid, fighting poverty, hospitality to asylum-seekers. All of this has allowed this new option, unthinkable fifteen years ago, of a christian-social government of the centre-left.

De Volkskrant has an interview with Christian Union leader Andre Rouvoet. "There are possibilities but also difficulties", he says. When it comes to narrowing income differences between rich and poor and fighting poverty, he suggests, the three parties should be able to reach an understanding soon enough. He also sees new prospects for improving environmental policies. And a Christian Democrat-Labour-Christian Union government will give residence permits to asylum-seekers whose application were rejected only after they'd already been living here, waiting for the outcome of the long, delayed, process, for many years.

But he sees differences on some financial possibilities. The Christian Union wants to keep the tax deduction for non-working partners (mostly used by housewives), while the Christian Democrats have come round to wanting to abolish it. On the other hand, the Christian Union and the Labour Party both want to abolish the tax deduction for mortgage interests, which mostly benefits the upper middle class but was long considered 'untouchable', and which the Christian-Democrats have vowed to protect. (Re income difference between CDA en CU voters).

And then of course there are the medical-ethical issues: abortion and euthanasia. "Those will be very intense discussions", Rouvoet says. The Christian Union is against abortion in all cases except when the mother's life is in danger, and sees euthanasia as a human intervention that clashes with God's commands. For Rouvoet, current legislation is not beyond discussion. "We want to be able to recognize our points of view in a possible government agreement. The medical-ethical questions are absolutely very high on our wishlist. They have priority." He refuses to say how much the Christian Union is prepared to yield. "I have a bottom line, but I am not going to name it now."

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nimh wrote:

A government with the Christian Union?

It does look ever more likely that the Christian-Democrats and Labour will end up bridging their programmatic differences, and their lack of a common parliamentary majority, through enlisting the bible-true Christian Union as minor, third coalition partner.

An odd outcome, perhaps, going on the image you all will have of the Netherlands. But it doesn't, in any case, look like the traditionally liberal Dutch legislation on "values issues" will change much. The people are just not interested - not even (and this surprises even me) the Christian Union voters themselves (let alone the more moderate Christian-Democratic voters).

This is from a post-election opinion poll of Maurice de Hond's Peil: the same question, admittedly very general, phrased in two different ways, gets roughly the same results.

If there will be a government of Christian-Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union, do you think that they should then revoke the current liberal legislation on euthanasia, abortion and gay marriage?

8% Yes
91% No

This is the data split by the voters of the different parties (listed from most right-wing to most left-wing). Note that the far right is as secular as the far left; the Christians are in the centre, centre-right.

Code:

                  YES    NO



Freedom Party      6%   93%



Rightwing Lib.     4%   95%



Christ-Democrat   13%   86%



Christian Union   43%   55%



Labour Party       2%   96%



Socialist Party    1%   95%



Green Left         0%   98%



Others            15%   85%

Do you believe that the current legislation in the Netherlands regarding euthanasia, abortion and gay marriage should be preserved if there will be a government of Christian-Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union?

89% Yes
9% No

Code:

                   NO   YES



Freedom Party     10%   90%



Rightwing Lib.     3%   95%



Christ-Democrat   21%   79%



Christian Union   42%   49%



Labour Party       2%   96%



Socialist Party    3%   95%



Green Left         2%   96%



Others            16%   84%

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I failed to update this thread, but the Netherlands have a new government: Christian-Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union.

Just by ways of snippeted information, this from a week or two ago:

Quote:

* RNW Press Review - Tuesday 6 February 2007 - by Mike Wilcox

All today's Dutch papers lead with the news that the Christian Democrat, Labour and Christian Union parties have presented their proposed government programme to their party executives. However, the papers highlight different aspects of the coalition deal negotiated by the party leaders.

NRC.Next says it wasn't just the party executives who got a look at the planned programme, with much of the agreement being leaked to the press.

De Volkskrant's headline reads "New course gets broad approval". With seven billion euros earmarked for environment, education and health care, the paper says Labour Party members are very pleased with the package. Christian Democrats, however, are less satisfied with the softening of measures to deal with long-term sickness at work.

* For the family

Algemeen Dagblad stresses another aspect of the deal: "Cabinet for the Family" is splashed across the front page. Families, the environment and run-down inner-city neighbourhoods are the big winners, it says. They will be the beneficiaries of the new investment made possible by the painful reforms of the last administration.

The Protestant daily Trouw prefers to point out that a general amnesty has been agreed for asylum seekers who have been in the country since 2001. The paper says the Christian Democrats are worried by the move which will mean at least 30,000 more immigrants will be given the right to stay in the Netherlands.

* Tweaking

The leaders will begin final talks today (on Tuesday) to try and tweak the deal to make it fit in even more with their parties' election manifestos. However, as Trouw says, these manoeuvres on behalf of the party faithful will not endanger the agreement as a whole.

De Telegraaf, in fine form, tells us that the new cabinet has planned themselves a "massive pay rise". Ministerial salaries, it says, are set to rise by 30 percent under the new government. And, the paper fumes, in the same paragraph, the cabinet-elect talks of the need for "balanced pay rises". To soften the blow, however, we read in the small print that the hike is to be phased in gradually.

* New EU constitution?

The NRC Handelsblad headline tells us that the coalition negotiators have agreed that there should be "No referendum on European constitution". In effect, we learn, any decision about a plebiscite on a new EU document will be taken by parliament.

Most papers cover the issue in depth quoting an interview with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. He points out that the Netherlands signed the EU constitution and that "if you sign up to a treaty, you should ratify it. If that's not possible, then you really have to help find a solution".

NRC.Next says Mr Barroso was guarded when asked if a solution to the EU contitution issue was closer now that the new Dutch government had come out against a referendum on a possible new EU treaty.

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This week in the polls (averaging the two weekly ones), the Socialist Party is at 28,5 seats (= 19%), and the Labour Party at 27,5 seats (= 18%).

That marks the first time in - well - ever, that the Socialist Party is larger than the Labour Party in the weekly average. A milestone, for sure.

The full rundown, translated to percentages:

24% - Christian Democrats
19% - Socialist Party
18% - Labour
14% - Rightwing liberals (VVD)
9% - Freedom Party (Wilders)
5% - Christian Union
5% - Green Left
2% - Democrats 66
2% - Party for the Animals

The landscape is ever more fragmented.. it's more like Scandinavian politics now than like the German model.

We also had provincial elections the other week. I had started to write all kinds of things about that, but I never wrapped it up. Wanted to do it properly. Perhaps I will still.

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Hum. OK, so I wrapped up my post about this month's provincial elections..

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..but it's pretty long (comprehensive as usual). And if I post it here in this post, it'll end up at the bottom of this page - when this page is already very long and full of tables and pictures from last November's national elections.

Would be confusing, I think.

So I'm just posting this, right here, in order to get us on a new page.

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Right

.

March 2007 Provincial Elections in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands there were provincial elections earlier this month. The twelve provinces of Holland constitute a middle-level administrative authority, wedged in between local councils and national government. Their power mostly concerns things like spatial planning, infrastructure, environment.

Turnout for these elections usually is far lower than for the local and national elections, though still higher than for the European elections. They are important nevertheless even just for a reason that has nothing to do with the provinces: the members of the provincial parliaments in their turn elect the 75 members of the national Senate.

The Dutch Senate fulfills a role akin to the British House of Lords rather than that of the US Senate. It checks laws that are passed by the regular parliament and has the power to send bills back, though it rarely does so. Senators feel less bound to party discipline than MPs though, and twice in the last ten years the Senate triggered a government crisis when it did bare its teeth.

Thats why it was important for the parties of the new Christian-Democrat/Labour/Christian Union government to get enough votes in the provincial elections to secure a majority of more than one or two seats in the Senate. And polls showed that it would be touch and go.

The outcome, however, seems to allay their fears. Taking into mind the effect of the low turnout, which traditionally favours the Christian-Democrats, Christian Union and Green Left, whose supporters are more disciplined, and puts the Labour Party, Socialist Party, and far right at a disadvantage, it roughly confirmed that of last November's national elections.

One major twist in the results, however, was that the far right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, which got 6% last November, did not take part. Many Wilders voters did not turn out, but despite a last-minute appeal by Wilders to cast a blank vote, those who did mostly opted for the rightwing-liberal VVD. This obviously benefited the VVD score accordingly.

In general, the low turnout put the left at a bit of a disadvantage to the right. Two graphs to show the results:

Results in %, compared with the results of the provincial elections of 2003 and those of last November's national elections

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/8756/nlprovincialelections07jy9.gif

Results in total number of seats gained in the provincial parliaments (left) and seats secured in the Senate (right)

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/3088/uitslagpsverkiezin80527sl2.jpg

---------------------------------------------------

Main news story: the confirmed breakthrough of the Socialist Party

Just like in November's general elections, the most striking aspect of these elections, was the breakthrough of the Socialist Party (SP).

Notable in particular is that the SP broke through most especially in the cities of the Catholic south. Whereas all across the country the SP is biting a large chunk out of the Labour Party's support, in the southern, Catholic provinces of Brabant and Limburg it is additionally taking a significant slice of the Christian-Democratic vote.

The result is that in both provinces, the SP in these elections came out ahead of the Labour Party. In Limburg, Labour lost 6 points and the Christian-Democrats 7 points; the Socialists gained 13. Now the Socialists have 19% and Labour just 16%. In Brabant, both Labour and the Christian-Democrats lost 6 points; the Socialists gained 13. Now the Socialists have 21% there, and Labour comes in fourth with just 14%.

This really is a strikingly different pattern than in the other 10 provinces, all mostly protestant/secular. In all those provinces, Labour lost a comparable chunk of votes, but the Christian-Democrats lost only marginally, and Socialist gains were lower by the same proportion.

The electoral map

You can also notice the result in this map of the largest party by district.

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/39/grootstepartijps2007qf6.jpg

As shown on the map:

Labour holds its traditional grip on the northern provinces and the largest cities (Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht), as well as the cities in the east;
The rightwing liberals come out on top in many of the suburban districts of the three (most urbanised) Western provinces, and take The Hague as well;
The Christian-Democrats take most all of the countryside outside the north;
Apart from a scattered dozen and a half municipalties in the Bible Belt, where Christian Union and the Dutch Reformed SGP hold sway instead.

But in the South, you can see that the Socialists have become the largest party in a string of cities and smaller towns. In most of them it has conveniently taken over the lead from the Labour Party, which had only gained them after struggling for decades to break through the Christian-Democratic hold on these regions. It has also leapfrogged Labour in Limburg's former mining area, long a Labour stronghold.

The Socialist Party and the South

Why does the SP do so well in the South, in particular? For one, because it has a long tradition especially in eastern Brabant, where it is well rooted. The SP was the second-largest party in the municipality of Oss when nationally, it wasn't even a blip on the radar, getting 0,4%.

The SP has a long tradition of local activism, neighbourhood activism, and that fits well with the clientalist tradition of local Catholic politicking. It also made it easier for voters to switch from what was once a vote by orders of the priest to one for the "reds" - because these here were local reds, who were offering neighbourhood services even before they posed any kind of challenge to the Christian-Democrats nationally.

A vote for Labour on the other hand always had involved a vague association of voting for the outsiders, the 'westerners', as well as carrying the stigma of voting for the immediate national rival of the Christian-Democrats.

Relevant here is also that the Christian-Democratic party moved to the right quite sharply after 2002. One result of that, which is only showing up now (and has been commented on little), is that the Christian-Democratic voters of today are much more slanted toward the upper income classes, with results sharply dropping off among those with lower incomes. This was not the case five or ten years ago, when Christian-Democratic support was evenly spread among the different income groups.

Basically, the Christian-Democrats seems to have won votes among the upper middle classes, probably from the rightwing liberals, but lost about as many among the lower middle classes. And partly because of what I described above, partly because of the remaining bad vibes over the failed negotiations to form a government between Labour and the Christian-Democrats in 2003, those lower-income votes it lost appear to have in greater numbers to the Socialist Party than to the Labour Party.

An article in the NRC that described the mood at the SP election night party illustrated some of these things nicely:

Quote:

The people love us, they think at the SP party

[..] Remi Poppe, Member of Parliament and SP man of the first hour, is overjoyed as he [listens] to the results coming in. In Oosterhout, Brabant, the SP gets 20,4 per cent, gaining handsomely, just like everywhere else in the country. "Look, our commitment is paying off. I have still helped set up a residents committee in Oosterhout, against the planned demolition of apartment buildings. We are now rewarded with votes for that."

In 1994, Remi Poppe had, together with SP leader Jan Marijnissen, been the first MP elected for the Socialist Party, which was founded in 1972. His explanation for tonight's gains: "The people understand that was are standing behind them. We know what has to happen, because we go into the neighbourhoods." Now, the SP is the third party of the country, with almost 52.000 members.

Then Jan Marijnissen comes in [..]. "This is the third time in a row that the SP scores a large victory. In the inn of the Cabinet there was no place for us, but in the inn of the people, there is."

[..] Socialist MP Agnes Kant [says] "The people want a more humane and social country. They think that we can take care of that the best."

(Note the Biblical metaphor used by Marijnissen, highly unusual for any Dutch leftwing politician.[/QUOTE]

---------------------------------------------------

The picturesque case of Reiderland

Outside the south, the only striking locality where the Socialists have taken the lead is Reiderland in the far northeast of the country. Reiderland is a most curious and fascinating case for polit-geeks who go for that kind of thing.

This collection of small villages in former turfland is a former communist bulwark, where the Dutch Communist Party ruled supreme for decades. Even throughout the nineties, the hardline Communists who refused to merge into the Green Left in 1990 and founded the extremely marginal New Communist Party NCPN (which nationally never got over 0,1%), still formed the largest party in the local council. (Above-mentioned polit-geeks can read an earlier post of mine with more background.

But now the NCPN seems to finally have collapsed, and the Socialists have finally succeeded in taken over the lead. It had failed previous times, presumably because it's seen as a "southern" party, with little local roots (or perhaps because the hardline communists of Reiderland remembered that the SP had started as a "deviationist" Maoist split-off from the Dutch Communist Party). Instead, in a curious shift that shocked local leftists, the hardcore communist voting block switched en masse to Pim Fortuyn (!) in 2002. So the SP gain there now is definitely of symbolic importance.

---------------------------------------------------

My old neighbourhood, a comfortingly leftist bulwark

Meanwhile I'm glad to see the results of my old voting station in Utrecht Razz

26% Green Left
18% Rightwing liberals (VVD)
17% Socialist Party
16% Labour Party
10% Democrats66
6% Christian-Democrats
3% Christian Union
3% Party for the Animals
1% local left-leaning party

73% for the left; 27% for the right. I'm proud ;-)

In general though, the inner city (where my station was in) keeps gentrifying, and now even became the only part of the city, apart from some newly built neighbourhoods in suburbia, where the rightwing liberals form the largest party :-(. Just 20 years ago this was solid Labour/leftist territory.

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So what are the issues that seem to account for the rising support of the SP and the seemingly declining support of Labour. And what, pray tell. is the Be Nice To Anmals Party all about.

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realjohnboy wrote:

So what are the issues that seem to account for the rising support of the SP and the seemingly declining support of Labour.

Hmmm.. I'm a lot more comfortable analysing results than sketching the big overall picture...

So instead of the anally scrupulous nuts and bolts data stuff that I usually do, I'm just gonna be ad libbing from the top of my head for this one..

Well, I guess you can choose to explain it by focusing on what went wrong with Labour, or what the SP did right.

In this post I'll go off first on an approach centering on what went wrong with the Labour Party.

The Labour Party moved clearly to the right under Wim Kok, party leader for the 1990, 1994 and 1998 elections ... it shed a lot of its classic social-democratic, idealistic politics in favour for a kind of Blairite / Clintonite "third way", market-friendly pragmatism...

That was still OK for many old timers and the classic working class electorate as long as a) the economy went well (and the 90s were a time of stock-and houseprices-fuelled booming) and b) the party was winning elections with it (and Kok became Prime Minister from 1994-2000)...

But it did gradually cut the party leadership, apparatus, wonks and bureacrats off from the blood line it had a) with the pavement-thumping ordinary members' passion, which just dissipated into at most nodding while watching the TV debates, and b) with the day-to-day feelings and concerns of the party's traditional working class constituency, which felt kind of abandoned and - didnt see itself reflected in this party of civil servants anymore...
So you had two problems. The leftwing of the Labour, including most of its grassroots members who in previous decades did all the organising and campaigning, as well as the crucial channeling between Labour voters and Labour leaders became.. disillusioned, disaffected.. went to work for NGOs instead, or went into business altogether then (go the whole mile)..

Once the Socialist Party finally broke through, many of those happily recognized, basically, their old party - because in many ways today's SP feels and acts and talks like the Labour Party of the 70s. Today's SP has absorbed loads of former Labour activists.
The working class constituency meanwhile, once those old "family" ties of the Labour pillar (with its own newspaper, TV and radio station, sportsclubs, camping sites etc) had finally fully dissolved, went adrift..

Many of them became apathetic and cynical, losing all belief in politics.. turnout kept dropping..
And then we need to talk about immigration. Immigration completely transformed the inner cities, working class neighbourhoods, gradually the "white flight" suburbs in turn too. It disrupted the communities that had existed there, fragmented neighbourhood cohesion.

In combination with the dismantling of Dutch industry (all moved to low-wage countries), immigration also led to the dissolution of a working class identity, as something you could be proud of, per se.

And the Labour Party was completely out of touch with its worker constituency about immigration. Throughout the 80s, talk of the downside of immigration led to immediate censure and accusative association with the far right, which in hindsight was marginal then, but at the time seemed to loom large. It just couldnt be discussed.

(The SP, in contrast, already published an alarmed report about the impact of immigration on inner city communities in the mid-80s, when it was still a Maoist splinter, and was roundly condemned for this "playing into the hands of the far right" by the collective rest of the Left)

So the white working class either stopped voting altogether or kept voting Labour purely out of dutiful tradition.. it was ready to be scooped away.
For the 2002 elections, Kok was replaced by Ad Melkert, a kind of Al Gore from 2000 - completely devoid of charisma, a bureaucrat.

Then Pim Fortuyn came.

And using the issue of immigration/integration (as well as his positively flamboyant, playful and provocative charismatic personality), he blasted the cosy, consensual system of professional politicians open and just scooped that whole white working class electorate right out of Labour's pool and the pool of non-voters.

In one blow, Labour imploded like a souffle and went from 30% to 15%. Fortuyn got 17%.
Ever since, basically, that white working class electorate is as up for grabs as the postmodern, suburban white-collar generation already was. In '03, new Labour leader Wouter Bos did a good job of recuperating most of it, but last November huge chunks of it went to the SP instead.

(A much smaller bit went to the far-right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders. But Wilders doesnt have anything like the appeal Fortuyn had to working class ex-Labour voters. His voters tend to come from the rightwing liberals instead.)

Its a consequence of the drastic postmodernisation that has step by step transformed Dutch politics in the 90s and 00s. Before that, plus or minus 3% in an election would be big; now whole chunks of the population shift from party to party from one election to the next.
And the SP did a brilliant job in scooping it up this time. Plus, unlike Fortuyn, it is well organised, disciplined, and with a long tradition of neighbourhood activism and involvement - especially in those white working class neighbourhoods (which can by now be found more in the suburbs than in the inner cities).

Instead of barging in with a big bang like Fortuyn had, the SP has diligently and gradually expanded its supporter and voter base, and eventually came to benefit from the multiplier effect of its own success, the pace at which it expanded increasing exponentially.

So although I'm sure that after its stunning gains now it'll drop back again later, it's probably not going to be the one-day fly that the List Fortuyn was.

But with all of that you'd move into the approach focusing on what the SP did right - and thats a new bullet point list (and probably better be a new post too).

Mind you, its a fascinating story really..

You see, the demise of the old Labour Party, as described above, is pretty much a cookiecutter-story that applies almost in extenso to the British Labour Party, the German SPD, the French PS, even the Swedish Socialdemocrats now, etc.

But the rise of the Socialist Party is pretty unique.. I cant think of an equivalent from the top of my head. (Yeah the German Linkspartei, but theyve been a lot less succesful, and also encompass a wholly different story as over half of it is made up of East-German DDR nostalgics).

Oh yeah:

realjohnboy wrote:

And what, pray tell. is the Be Nice To Anmals Party all about.

Its an animal rights party. The first one of its kind that made any parliament in the world, apparently. Claims to be neither left nor right, just the voice of the animals, but so far that appears to put it in the centre-left.

Its voters come from all over the place though. In the provincial elections the Animal Party seemed to benefit from the far right Freedom Party not taking part, for example. It's a perfect "neutral" way to cast a protest vote I guess.

It has lots of celebrities campaigning for it too - TV personalities and musicians and stuff.

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Recommended reading!

Quote:

Changing Patterns in Social Fabric Test Netherlands' Liberal Identity
Washington Post
2007-06-23

Summary:

Quote:

For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics - the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage. But today, with an orthodox Christian party in government for the first time, and immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country is rethinking its anything-goes policies. Reportage by Molly Moore.

Full text:

Quote:

AMSTERDAM -- For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics -- the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana.

Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies.

And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so all alone.

"People in high political circles are saying it can't be good to have a society so liberal that everything is allowed," said Kranendonk, editor of Reformist Daily and an increasingly influential voice that resonates in the shifting mainstream of Dutch public opinion. "People are saying we should have values; people are asking for more and more rules in society."

In cities across the Netherlands, mayors and town councils are closing down shops where marijuana is sold, rolled and smoked. Municipalities are shuttering the brothels where prostitutes have been allowed to ply their trade legally. Parliament is considering a ban on the sale of hallucinogenic "magic mushrooms." Orthodox Christian members of parliament have introduced a bill that would allow civil officials with moral objections to refuse to perform gay marriages. And Dutch authorities are trying to curtail the activities of an abortion rights group that assists women in neighboring countries where abortions are illegal.

The effort to rein in the Netherlands' famed social liberties is not limited to the small, newly empowered Christian Union party, which holds two of the 16 ministries in the coalition government formed this year. Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops -- known here as "coffee shops."

"Has the Netherlands changed? Yes," said Frank de Wolf, a Labor Party member of the Amsterdam City Council. "There is not only a different mood among our people and politicians, but there are different problems now."

The Netherlands is going through the same racial, ethnic and religious metamorphosis as the rest of Western Europe: Large influxes of black, Arab and Muslim immigrants are changing the social complexion of an overwhelmingly white, Christian nation struggling with its loss of homogeneity.

But here those anxieties are exacerbated by alarm over the international crime organizations that have infiltrated the country's prostitution and drug trades, the increasing prevalence of trafficking in women and children across its borders, and dismay over the Netherlands' image as an international tourist destination for drugs and sexual debauchery.

"There is an uneasiness about globalization that the Dutch don't have control over their own country anymore," said James C. Kennedy, professor of contemporary history at the Free University of Amsterdam. "There is a more conservative mood in the country that is interested in setting limits and making sure things don't get out of hand."

De Wolf, the Amsterdam councilman, is part of that movement.

"In the past, we looked at legal prostitution as a women's liberation issue; now it's looked at as exploitation of women and should be stopped," said de Wolf, sitting in the offices of the medical complex where he works as an HIV-AIDS researcher.

He said Amsterdam's police force is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to fight the sophisticated foreign organized crime networks operating in the city. Laws designed to regulate prostitution and brothel operators have instead opened the trade to criminal gangs, according to de Wolf and other city officials.

And de Wolf said he is fed up with the planeloads of British thrill-seekers who take cheap flights to Amsterdam each Friday evening for weekend binges of sex, drugs and alcohol in his city's red-light district, where scantily clad prostitutes stand behind plate-glass windows beckoning to potential customers.

"Amsterdam has a reputation that you can do everything here," de Wolf said. "That's not the way I want people to look at Amsterdam."

Those same concerns have prompted some cities to bar tourists from their marijuana and hashish shops. Some localities now require patrons of the shops to show Dutch identity cards to gain entry, and a new nationwide law forbids the sale of alcohol in shops that sell pot and hash. Some lawmakers have proposed requiring the shops to warn their customers about the dangers of cannabis, mimicking the warning labels on tobacco and alcohol products.

Ivo Opstelten, the mayor of Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, announced this month that he will close all marijuana shops within 250 yards of a school -- nearly half of the city's 62 shops.

"We want to discourage the use of drugs among young people," said Opstelten, a member of the Labor Party. "Studies show soft drugs are detrimental to their health and brain development."

Michael Veling, 52, proprietor of an Amsterdam coffee shop where a marijuana joint sells for $5.50, said politicians increasingly are looking for any excuse to scale back the sale of soft drugs.

"This toleration policy goes back 35 years," said Veling, snapping the lids off plastic boxes of pungent marijuana blends marked Neville's Haze and White Widow. "Now the word 'coffee shop' has become a symbol of something we don't like about society."

But historian Kennedy describes the attitude as a national "weariness with moral squalor -- the Dutch have grown tired of it and unwilling to put up with it."

He said the rise of the orthodox Christian Union party, many members of which shun television as part of their strict religious code, has coincided with the changing public attitude.

Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop is a member of the Christian Union. He refuses to work Sundays and recently declined an invitation to participate in the U.S. Embassy's Memorial Day commemoration because it was held on the Sabbath, officials said.

Leaders of the Christian Union say they are not pushing to banish legalized prostitution or soft drugs. And no officials are discussing rollbacks on same-sex marriage, euthanasia or abortion, even though the party opposes all three.

Instead, the party and other leaders who agree with some of its stances are "copying from the United States," according to Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Women on Waves, an organization that provides Internet counseling on abortions and charters ships to provide off-shore abortion advice to women in European countries that do not allow abortions.

"They are chopping away at the edges so that people don't notice," Gomperts said, "resetting the norm of what is accepted practice."

Editor Kranendonk said his Christian Union party is realistic: "When you're a small party, you can't change everything in four years.

"If you had said to me in 1995 that one of the main orthodox Christian parties would be in the government today, I wouldn't have believed it," Kranendonk said. "The number of Christians is diminishing, churches are closing."

He paused and smiled, "But there are other ways of believing."

But see also the comments on this article

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For an update, note this post in the parallel thread.

Includes:

VVD in crisis after dismissing Verdonk

and

Geert Wilders, King or Jester? Leader of Freedom Party mocks the conventions of parliament for hour and a half

Arresting reading.

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Dutch politics snapshot: Political fragmentisation and a newly reinvigorated far right

Judging on the opinion polls, Dutch politics is as fragmented as it's ever been in history. It's really striking. Whereas the Dutch politics of my childhood was dominated by three parties that together took 85% of the vote, the vote is now spread out over this plethora of medium-sized parties, making it almost impossible for even three parties to create a working majority among them. It's like Scandinavia minus the traditional dominance of the Social Democrats.

The second trend worth noting is the renewed tilt to the (far) right. Traditionally, left and rightwing parties have balanced each other out roughly 45% to 55%. The Fortuynist revolution of 2002 toppled that balance into a lopsided 35% to 65%, the most devastating defeat of the left in living memory. But as the List Fortuyn disintegrated and the right wing economic policies of the Balkenende governments of 2002-2006 caused a popular backlash, the original balance re-established itself. By 2005, the polls were giving a majority to the left - and not just the overall left, including the wishy-washy Democrats, but the 'real' left. To a red-green coalition of Labour, Greens and Socialists.

That leftwing victory never materialised, as Balkenende's Christian-Democrats made a strong comeback in the course of 2006. But the elections that November did make for a deadlock between left and right that necessitated a centrist government of Christian-Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union.

That government is not doing very well, popularity-wise. Initially, it was Labour that suffered the most, as many of its voters skipped their preference to the oppositional Socialists. But the Socialists, digesting a growth that had seen it triple in size in a couple of years, got caught up in a number of internal and organisational pecadillos, so now the energy and pulling power on the left is weak almost across the board. A Political Barometer poll last week showed that Labour and the Socialists were two of the three parties whose voters from 2006 were now most likely to say they didnt know whom they'd vote for.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the opposition, the rightwing liberal VVD was steering an increasingly fraught course reconciling its classical liberal, bourgeois, free-market politics with its populist, law & order and anti-immigration profile. Both constituencies have a long history in the VVD, but the tension became ever more acute, especially when a leadership election pitted figureheads of the two currents against each other and the populist candidate, former Minister of Immigration Rita Verdonk, lost by a whisker.

Now Verdonk has her own party, called Proud of the Netherlands, which was recently officially launched as a nation-wide organisation. It operates alongside the more extreme anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Freedom party of Geert Wilders. And the two of them together are succeeding in something neither the traditional rightwing parties nor Geert Wilders by himself had managed to do in the past five years: rallying a large majority of Pim Fortuyn's voters again.

After Fortuyn's murder and the subsequent denouement of the List Fortuyn, the different constituencies he had appealed to went their separate ways again. Some had always been reliable right-wing voters, and returned to their origins in the traditional right wing parties (VVD and Christian Democrats). Some of those stuck with the various new far right parties. Some normally never voted, and went back to that habit. Others, however, were traditional Labour voters, and those scattered as well: some stuck with the far right after 2002, others switched to the traditional rightwing parties, some stayed home, some opted for a leftwing protest vote for the Socialists, and some even returned 'back home' to Labour.

A poll by Maurice de Hondt last week showed how Fortuyn's 2002 voters voted in 2006, and how they would vote now. In the 2006 elections, 33% voted for Wilders or one of the Fortuynist splinter parties; 23% voted for the traditional rightwing parties (VVD and Christian Democrats); 22% voted for the Socialists or Labour; and 17% didnt vote at all.

Now, Proud of the Netherlands and Wilders' Freedom Party would together pool 72% of them. The traditional right is left with 5% and the Socialists and Labour with a combined 2%.

That's not the end of it. Proud of the Netherlands is also drawing in a whole range of voters whom Pim Fortuyn had never reache, from the Christian-Democrats for example, and especially from her old party, the VVD. People for whom Pim had perhaps been too flamboyant, too unpredictable.

In short, the strength of these two parties is hurting parties across the rest of the spectrum. The other result, of course, is that there are now no less than six or even seven or eight "main parties", against just four even just a year ago.

Dutch parliament has 150 seats. Below are the current number of seats that the parties, listed from most leftwing to most rightwing (and roughly grouped together), are polling in the two weekly opinion polls: those of the Political Barometer and Maurice De Hondt's agency.

Code:

17  16  Socialist Party

 9  10  Green Left

21  18  Labour



together: 44-47 seats, or about 30% of the vote;



 2   2  Party for the Animals

10  14  Democrats 66

 8   7  Christian Union



together: 20-23 seats, or about 14% of the vote;



34  33  Christian Democrats

15  12  VVD (right-wing liberals)

 2   2  SGP (staunchly religious Dutch Reformed party)



together: 47-51 seats, or about 33% of the vote;



23  25  Proud of the Netherlands

 9  11  Freedom Party



together: 32-36 seats, or about 23% of the vote;

(Procedural note: the way I've grouped these parties together may suggest greater continuity than there has been. After all, a smart reader will say: add up the top two categories and you've got about 45% - i.e., you got the exact 45%/55% split as Holland's had traditionally.

This is a little misleading because of the way the Christian Union (CU) has drifted in the landscape. A staunchly Protestant party that's against abortion and gay marriage, it used to be considered on the very right edge of politics, along with the SGP. But the political playing field is different now, and the party's relatively liberal views on economic policy and on asylum-seekers and Muslim immigrants mean that nowadays it's regarded as a centrist party, stuck right in between the right and the left. The voters are still largely the same though.

So if you want to do a historical comparison of how the left's doing, you're left with 44% minus the CU vote -- is 39%. That's dreadfully low. The only, shallow comfort that even though the far right is now doing better than even Fortuyn had done, the left hasnt fallen as far as it did in 2002, when it was down to 33%. But yeah, that was a historical nadir, so that's not much of a comfort.)

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I emailed this update to some colleagues, might as well cross-post it here!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi all,

There are local elections in the Netherlands today. Not the most urgent seeming development, I know - mostly they are interesting for the preview they will provide for the general elections that will take place in June, now that the government has fallen. I'm playing hooky from my regular [..] tasks to bother you with it mostly to share some interesting trivia, [..] but they do also have relevant links with issues we are working on [..].

On a practical note, while the campaign was dominated by national issues and politicians, there will be some difficulties in reading the results as tea leaves for the general elections. Local parties tend to grab a fair share of the vote; comparatively lower turnout tends to benefit certain parties (the Christian Democrats, the Christian Union, the Green Left); and the far-right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, which is currently polling as the country's second largest party with some 17% of the vote, is only taking part in two municipalities. One thing the elections are sure to bear out is the progressive atomization of the Dutch political landscape (which, um, I illustrated in a set of charts one recent night).

Geert Wilders' strategic choices

Wilders' party is running only in The Hague and in Almere, a commuter city where many former residents of Amsterdam have moved as part of the "white flight" (though other Amsterdammers are increasingly moving there too). The Freedom Party learned the lesson of its predecessor on the far right, the List Pim Fortuyn, which ran across the country with hastily improvised candidate lists right after it was founded, only to see its local representatives quickly fall out, split up and embarrass themselves. Wilders' operation, in contrast, has been extremely disciplined (and top-down).

He has also strategically chosen the two municipalities to run in, bypassing incurably leftwing Amsterdam as well as Rotterdam, where the populist constituency is already catered to by Fortuyn's own former local party, Livable Rotterdam. In both Almere and The Hague, the Freedom Party stands a good chance of becoming the largest party. (More about the far right and its unusual character below.)

Tweets away! Politicians pounce on Web 2.0

Politicians and pundits pounced to play with all the new web 2.0 tools. De Volkskrant linked in and reviewed the best and the worst of the hundreds of campaign spots which eager but often hapless local parties and politicians put on YouTube. Enthusiasts could follow blog posts and tweets by parties and politicians in real time, and mapped out on a Google Map on Follow the Elections ("The Hague: 1687 tweets, 159 posts").

Every election, voters can check whom to vote for on stemwijzer.nl ("vote wiser" or "vote guide"), a site by the Institute for Public and Policy - you answer 30 topical policy questions, and they'll give you a ranking of which parties are closest to you. It is used massively - I remember that in one general election (2003?), the millions of unique visitors meant that something like a fifth of all voters must have tried it. This time Stemwijzer.nl offered customized tests for 56 individual municipalities, but it also faced competition from kieskompas.nl ("vote compass"), established by the Free University Amsterdam, which offered tests for 62 municipalities and charts out how you compare with the parties on a compass.

Green Left leader Femke Halsema organized a Twitter party in the weekend, "to celebrate the freedom of the digital web". She didn't talk party politics but used the occasion to praise freedom of expression and protest the clampdowns on music downloading. The idea was to prove the "internet pessimists" wrong; and those would include the Dutch Queen, who in her Christmas speech warned that communication via the net could be impersonal and empty. "Via Twitter you are wished good health when you're sick, you know each other's daily routine," Halsema enthused, "on the Internet you meet dates, you debate, you find news, you make friends and enemies." 450 people attended and enough people followed the live stream online that it became unreachable.

Voting at night, and other ways to pull in the youth vote

Like everywhere, turnout rates in the Netherlands drop sharply among the younger age groups, and both the government and political parties are resorting to usual and more unusual solutions. The most eyecatching this year was the initiative of three cities to open a special voting station at midnight last night. In Rotterdam, Groningen and The Hague, which had the lowest turnout four years ago, young people could vote all night. Some 300 people did so in The Hague, with some 1,200 attending an election night party where city aldermen DJ'd. Political parties placed more young candidates on their lists, and the city of Amsterdam pushed the website YEEAH!, a kind of social network site for politically conscious youth.

Geert Wilders and Rita Verdonk: not your usual far right

We were chatting here the other day about how the Dutch far right is different. It's got little truck with cultural conservatism, appeals to gay and women's rights in its rhetoric, and derides the country's strict Christians as well as Muslims. Part of that is constituency: its supporters are often secular, urban working class voters. Part of it is the idolization of Pim Fortuyn, the late, flamboyant gay politician. Part of it is pragmatism: with the papers eager to report about gay teachers being harassed by Muslim students and women being harassed on the street by Moroccan-Dutch youths, it's a good point for the far right to jump on. And partly it's the unusual slant of Dutch nationalism, which is paradoxically all about the self-image as a modern and tolerant country - to put it bluntly, the message becomes "keep your filthy Muslim hands off of our gays, Jews and women."

There was a striking illustration of that this week. A rival far right party called Proud of the Netherlands, led by former Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, had to withdraw two candidates who turned out to be too extreme. One of them had Twittered: "When are we finally going to gun down Muslims who are anti-Jewish and anti-Israel?"

Minorities voting for the far right?

Oddly, there are signs that the Freedom Party increasingly also appeals to certain minority groups: middle-class, second/third-generation Surinamese-Dutch, who resent the inflow of newer immigrants and tie them to issues of crime, and Hindustani Surinamese, who share some of the Freedom Party's fear or disapproval of Muslims.

Centre-left newspaper De Volkskrant quoted a Hindustani-Surinamese onlooker at an anti-Wilders demonstration: "I'm still going to vote for the Freedom Party. The country needs order." A poster on the Surinamese-Dutch web forum Waterkant.nl is concerned: "It's incomprehensible that there are Surinamese who sing at the opening party of Rita Verdonk's party, vote for Pim Fortuyn and think the Freedom Party only has Muslims in its sight. [..] A lot of Surinamese seem to still think that it will stop at Muslims. But as somebody said, if they're talking about Jews, black people have to be alert."

But another poster on that forum counters: "That a hindustani would vote for the Freedom Party also has to do with how in the big cities, The Hague for example, they are driven out by the ever larger groups of Turks and Moroccans, that's not a fable that's a fact! For example, a mandir in the Mijtenstreet has been plagued for years by youths hanging about, the above-mentioned groups or just Moroccans. Those guys have harassed old women going to the mandir, [..] broken windows of the mandir, threatened people etc. [..] With as consequence that the mandir has now been closed - and guess what will come in its place."

Voting becomes both easier and harder, raising issues of privacy and enfranchisement

Unlike in the US, but like in most European countries, you don't have to register to vote in the Netherlands. You get sent your voting card to your home, take it to your assigned voting station, they check your card against their list of names, and that's it. But busy commuters have little time, so the last couple of elections, municipalities started experimenting with special voting stations on train stations to make it easier for them. To be allowed to vote outside your normal station, however, involved burdensome paperwork in advance, so this time there's a new system: everyone can vote everywhere.

This ease of use comes at a cost. There is no digital network in place for the (volunteer) voting station clerks to check your name with a central list of voters, so the old verification system no longer worked. Instead, voters were now obliged to bring their passport, ID or driving license.

Since the Law on Obligatory Identification was passed in 2005, all Dutch residents over 14 are in any case obliged to be able to identify themselves at the request of police, and face a 50 Euro fine if they can not. But privacy organization Freebit nevertheless argues that some 200,000 eligible voters were disenfanchised because they have no valid ID. Mostly people who lost their passports or let them expire, but Freebit argues that there are also people who cannot afford one or are not able to go city hall twice every five years to request one and pick it up again. There are also conscientious objectors, who disagree with the inclusion of biometric properties (finger print and face scan) in the newest generation of passports and are refusing to apply for a new one. Freebit placed a protest declaration on its website that people could take with them to the voting station, either to present instead of voting or to present in solidarity while still bringing ID and voting. The Dutch Jurists Committee for Human Rights (NJCM) brought a complaint about the new voting regulations to the UN human rights committee last year.

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Well, an hour ago with still one hour to go until the poll stations close, about 53% have voting.

However, in Almere the voter outcome seems to be lower than in 2006. (Which could be favourable for Wilders, I think.)

(Since I'm watching football just now, I especially like this headline, NL loopt niet warm voor gemeenteraadsverkiezingen Wink

)

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@Walter Hinteler,

Outcome in all Netherlands is about 56% = lower than in 2006.
(Netherlands : USA still 0:0 after 35 mins)

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I'm quite surprised that (unofficially) the PvdA seems to have won quite a few % in some towns (as of now e.g. in Doetichem and some other smaller communities).
I'd thought that it would have been good if they'd not lost too much.

(Netherlands:USA 1:0 [50 mins played])

1 Reply

Elections in the Netherlands (again)

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