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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A few political items that happened to catch my eye:
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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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The Dutch nine-to-twelve-party system is sometimes hard to understand for foreigners;
especially when the small parties come into play. Therefore I’m running a mini-series
that treats all eleven parties that stand a decent chance of getting seats in the upcoming elections.
We’ll go from largest to smallest.
Today we’ll continue with the SP.
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More details about several unfolding political stories: the prime-minister race,
Balkenende’s continuing stability problems, a PvdA+CDA coalition, new SP party
leader Roemer, and the local government negotiations in Almere and Rotterdam.
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On Wednesday Dutch voted for their local councils, and the result is interesting. SP leader Kant resigns, Wilders’s PVV the largest party in one city, PvdA and CDA lose, D66 wins.
Before we continue, one housekeeping note: I will be away for the weekend, and there will be no updates to this blog. Publication will resume on Monday.
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