This weekend social-democratic PvdA is holding its party congress. With most eyes on the CDA’s problems, attention for the PvdA is less than it should be, also on this blog. The PvdA is suffering from most of the same problems as the CDA, and it’s doing even worse in the polls — relatively speaking.

Like the CDA, the PvdA is a former mass party that’s slowly bleeding to death because its voters don’t trust it any more or are looking elsewhere for some old-fashioned ideological standpoints. It didn’t lose as much as the CDA in the 2010 elections, but the current polls are dramatic: 19 seats, a loss of 11.

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Some minor points:

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Well, it’s clear the elections are drawing near. Coalition news is on the rise, with yesterday Rutte indicating a coalition with the PVV is not entirely out of the question, and today Cohen reacting to that news.

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Yesterday the leaders of the eight largest parties debated on the economy. It was a tightly-led debate with a distinctly less weird format than usual, and it allowed all eight participants to shine a few times — or fail to do so, but that was their own fault.

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This morning PvdA party leader Cohen apologised for the errors and vagueness surrounding the PvdA election programme and the amount of recent changes in it.

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Sunday I watched the first debate in this election cycle, and here’s my report. It was slated as a “prime minister debate,” and as a result only four party leaders participated: Cohen (PvdA), Balkenende (CDA), Rutte (VVD), and Wilders (PVV).

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Peil.nl had published a new poll in which respondents were asked for their wishes and expectations regarding coalitions and prime ministers. There are a few nuggets in here.

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I owe my readers an apology for not posting much last week. I was too busy doing other stuff, and besides Dutch politics are now in a relatively calm phase where relatively little is happening.

Anyway, both Peil.nl and the Politieke Barometer have published new polls, and I’ve added them to the polls page.

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Just after the announcement of Cohen’s succession to the PvdA party leadership, the phrase “Yes we Cohen” (coined in obvious imitation of another catch phrase used by senior politicians in largish Western countries) made the rounds of the newspapers and blogs. I dismissed it as an invention of some PvdA campagin committee and didn’t blog about it.

Yesterday, however, I heard the real story behind “Yes we Cohen.”

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Oh my, the new Peil.nl poll has landed two days early. I’ve added it to the polls page.

The timing is surprising, the content isn’t. Basically it confirms Thursday’s poll in that the PvdA wins five seats, of which one comes from the right, two from D66, and one each from GL and SP. The centre-left PvdA+CDA+D66 coalition does not yet have a majority in this poll, but does win two seats.

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The new Politieke Barometer poll has landed, and I’ve added it to the polls page.

The PvdA won seven seats, and that’s really a lot for just one week. Even in my dampened-down average the PvdA is now four seats larger than the CDA. It’s clear that the appointment of Cohen has been an excellent move.

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I’ve been neglecting the recent polls a bit. Each week, Peil.nl (Maurice de Hond) and the Politieke Barometer publish their ongoing general election polls (on Sunday and Thursday, respectively), and this are obviously prime data sources for any Dutch political blog.

Reason I’ve been neglecting them is that I was working on a polls and coalition overview, which is now finally finished. In the future I can give a brief overview of every new poll and refer you to this page for the details, as well as the poll trends.

The page also contains a coalition creation game, where you can try your hand at forming a stable majority coalition, and find out why it takes so bloody long.

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In the series “I did not see this coming,“ two major leadership developments yesterday and today, one each for CDA and PvdA. Besides, one death in the family.

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Some small fry that might be of interest to political observers:

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Oh my, Peil.nl has published more polls, and they consistently show that Bos’s gamble is still paying off.

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