Clearly an even bigger part of the vote than predicted shifted to VVD and PvdA, who duked it out in a classic prime-minister race and helped each other win voters from other parties in their own blocks.
Whatever the foreign press will say, this is not a case of voters running towards sensible, pro-Europe centre parties. That was the net result, but the cause was that both parties in the race happened to be more-or-less pro-Europe and not as extremist as SP and PVV. If SP and VVD had raced it out, as everybody expected until two weeks back, the result would have been difficult to interpret for foreign observers.
Of course, now VVD and PvdA have to form a Purple coalition. That means they’ll repeat the mistakes of the original Purple coalition: PvdA becoming too pro-market, VVD being forced to shut up about immigration. The next elections will see a terrible beating of PvdA and VVD and wins for SP and PVV. That’s the obvious result of a centrist coalition.
The public opinion on especially immigration has shifted towards the VVD point of view since the original Purple, and that will help it some.
The only real alternative to Purple is PvdA+SP+CDA+D66, but D66 said a few times it doesn’t really want to rule with the SP. Still, the fact is that when it comes to government formation the PvdA has a choice, and the VVD doesn’t. For the VVD it’s Purple or nothing. That evens the balance a bit.
]]>The reason I don’t trust the PvdA is Purple. In recent polls the pure Purple coalition, VVD+PvdA+D66, has gained a majority. Immediately all political pundits started to talk about its chances, which are indeed fairly decent.
Everyone now concentrates on centrist coalitions such as Purple, or a forbidden coalition of PvdA, CDA, and VVD. I still do not believe in the latter, but Purple could become a serious option. But there are two important points:
Purple will be a disaster for PvdA and VVD because they’ll be forced to compromise with each other, which will cause renewed attacks from the flanks, SP and PVV. So I don’t understand why either party would want to go Purple.
The prime-minister race has changed from Rutte vs. Roemer to Rutte vs. Samsom. But if we get both in government anyway, why bother to choose between them. Obviously Rutte and Samsom officially deny any interest in Purple and each other, but still ...
The only other real option is centre-left: roughly PvdA+SP+D66+CDA. The problem here is that D66 has clearly indicated it does not want a coalition with extremist SP. We’ll have to see if that’s still the case tomorrow evening, but if it is we have a problem. And D66 would not mind Purple at all.
It’s going to be a long formation.
]]>From 1946 to 1994 the CDA (and its predecessor parties) sat in government and decided on a case-by-case basis whether to form a coalition with PvdA or VVD. Then the CDA itself started to belong to the right but that didn’t change its position in politics. It could go over left, and did so occasionally just to remind the VVD.
]]> Then D66 came along, as fourth party in the three-party system, and demanded change. After the 1994 elections, which were disastrous for the CDA, D66 proposed a Purple coalition, so named because purple is a blend of PvdA red and VVD blue. A PvdA+VVD+D66 coalition would banish the CDA from the halls of power and change Dutch politics.Partly because the CDA was haughty and confused, partly because D66 was a vital ingredient for any coalition, the Purple coalition came into being, and stayed in power for eight years.
Still, it was not entirely natural for PvdA and VVD to rule together. Both had to make concessions: the PvdA agreed to a mostly right-wing economic programme with lots of free-market fundamentalism that would make everybody happy and share-holding and fulfilled, while the VVD agreed to embrace multiculturalism, which would automatically lead to an open, tolerant society where all cultural values were relative. Also, this would not bother native Dutch in the slightest.
This compact is the core reason of the current polticial imbalance. Purple made both PvdA and VVD suspect in the eyes of their traditional voters. Worse, it did not allow any sort of political canalisation of unease about either free-marketism or immigration. PvdA and VVD closed their eyes. As to CDA and D66, they’d eventually need PvdA or VVD for a coalition, and why upset potential partners by committing sacrilege against either free-marketism or multiculturalism?
The recent political upheaval is caused by voters rejecting free-marketism or multiculturalism (or both), finding no hearing with the traditional four parties, and looking for alternatives: LPF and PVV on the right, against multiculturalism, and SP on the left, against free-marketism.
What’s been happening since 2002 is three separate struggles for dominance: one on the left, one on the right, and more recently one in the centre. Eventually the country will go back to a three-party system, but what’s being determined right now is which three parties will be in the system. On the left, PvdA or SP? On the right, VVD or PVV? In the centre, CDA or D66?
It seems that Rutte has won a major victory for the VVD. He stretched out his hand to the PVV, and Wilders thanked him by walking out of the negotiations, causing the fall of government and new elections. That’s not how a leader of one of the three big parties behaves.
Besides, the PVV is only about Wilders, and doesn’t have the organisational clout to become a true political party. Also, the VVD has taken over the more moderate parts of Wilders’s anti-immigration platform. So on the whole I think the VVD is going to win its struggle on the right wing.
On the left the situation is quite different. The PvdA was much more deeply implicated by Purple than the VVD. The VVD only had to keep its mouth shut about immigration. That’s not hard to do, especially when it could resume talking in 2002.
The PvdA, on the other hand, had to really believe in VVD-style free-marketism in order to remain enthusiastic about Purple economics for eight years. A much more fundamental shift was asked of the social-democrats than of the liberals, and the PvdA, eager to stab eternal competitor CDA in the back, complied.
One of the besetting problems of the party is that all forty-something and younger party members believe in the free market — not in a positive sort of way, but as a kind of natural force that determines everything.
Sure, a bit of state here and there for garnish because we are social-democrats, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the privatisation of health care, or energy, or the railroads, or whatnot. New party leader Samsom is the ultimate example of this type of centrist “third way” politician. Even though he knows he has to backtrack to the left, I doubt he can pull it off.
Because the PvdA has become completely disconnected from genuine left-wing thinking, because Samsom is such a glaring exponent of that disconnect, because it’s the SP that best represents core social-democratic values nowadays, I think the SP is going to win the struggle on the left wing.
The current prime-minister race between VVD and SP nicely fits in — which should make you distrust this theory. I hope I’m not guilty of extrapolating a few coincidences in order to make bold predictions. Then again, I’ve had the feeling the SP was going to win on the left for a long time.
And what about the centre? Casting the struggle there as one between CDA and D66 is incorrect. These parties do not compete for many voters. The CDA competes with VVD and PVV (and a tiny bit of PvdA), while D66 competes with the VVD and the left-wing parties.
With the CDA sharing the general malaise of the traditional parties, I see D66 as having slightly better chances right now. And Pechtold sees his opening and is tacking hard to get out of the left wing and into the centre. But CDA and D66 are ultimately more dependent on what happens on the flanks than on what happens in the centre.
]]>Today we’ll continue with extreme-right PVV, Geert Wilders’s party.
]]>The PVV is Geert Wilders. Other PVV politicians make the news every now and then, but they don’t matter. The PVV will stand or fall with Wilders.
After the 2010 elections Wilders got the perfect deal: he would support the VVD+CDA Rutte government without taking part himself, and without requirement to vote with government on a fairly long list of issues. Thus he could continue to profile himself as the right-wing man in Dutch politics without being bound by complex deals with VVD and CDA, but with the added cachet of being more-or-less in government. Perfect.
See the 2010 profile for extensive background on Wilders.
Early this year Wilders made a series of miscalculations, starting with his decision to switch from bashing Moroccans to bashing Eastern Europeans who came here to steal our jobs (and never mind that they generally take the jobs Dutch feel too good for). Also, he started to emphasise his anti-Europeanism, culminating in his campaign promise to remove the Netherlands from the European Union and the euro, and the lazy, spendthrift Greeks be damned.
In January he even attacked the Queen for wearing a headscarf when she entered a mosque during a state visit to Oman, but this was a serious error, with parties and people from left to right lining up to defend the Majesty.
Finally, in April, he walked out of austerity budget consultations with VVD and CDA, leaving prime minister Rutte little choice but to offer his resignation and prepare new elections. It’s unclear to me what Wilders thought to achieve here: his poll numbers since April haven’t exactly tanked, but there is a clear downward trend.
Besides, there’s the matter of simplicity. Individually, all of Wilders’s actions this year are useful for attracting angry, older, male, white right-wing voters, but the resulting party programme is a lot less clear than “Down with Islam,” and that may confuse Wilders voters, whose intellectual capacity isn’t overwhelming to begin with.
Worse, where in the 2010 campaign Wilders concentrated on attacking the PvdA because it’s the party his voters hate most, in the single 2012 debate he appeared in so far he attacked Rutte’s VVD and Roemer’s SP, largely ignoring Samsom’s PvdA.
From a strictly electoral perspective this is correct: fellow right-wing party VVD and fellow protest party SP are the PVV’s most serious competitors. Still, because of that the average PVV voter doesn’t hate these parties. And if he attacks Rutte and Roemer too harshly his voters might even discover some sympathy for them.
Currently the polls give Wilders about 16 to 19 seats. It’s worth remembering that this was the same number the final polls in the 2010 campaign gave him, but instead he won 24.
The same may happen this year, and in that case, even though it hasn’t grown the PVV remains a powerful force in Dutch politics. On the other hand, he may also significantly under-perform and end up with 12 to 15 seats.
The problem is that the PVV electorate is very hard to measure. Some supporters don’t want to own up to voting PVV, and even among those who do there’s always the question of turnout: will an angry, low-education voter with a penchant for cheering Wilders actually bother to go to the voting booth to actually vote for the man? So far the answer has been a resounding Yes, but that could change any time.
Maybe Wilders is losing part of his magic, which would mean part of his followers just stay home and he drops to well below his polling average. Maybe nothing special is going on and he’ll score about 24 seats again. Hell, maybe he’ll actually win 16 to 19 seats. It’s completely unpredictable.
As to coalitions: Wilders doesn’t have a chance of a snowball in hell to be in the next government, or even to support one. Just today he suggested a VVD+SP+PVV coalition, which is laughable. This shows that he’s run out of options now that he’s betrayed the only coalition possibility for him: with VVD and CDA.
So opposition it is for Wilders. One thing is certain: he’ll be loud about it.
]]>Today we’ll continue with the former natural leadership party CDA.
]]>The CDA and its predecessor parties ruled the country from 1918 to 1994. This, its detractors never fail to point out, is slightly longer than the CPSU ruled the Soviet Union.
Those days seem gone. In 1994 the CDA was ousted from power by a hitherto-unthinkable coalition of left-wing PvdA and right-wing VVD, who formed the Purple coalition with D66. In 2002 the CDA returned to the centre of power under new leader Balkenende — not by any positive virtue but because it was available while being neither Purple nor Fortuyn.
In the Balkenende years the CDA once again combined now with VVD, then with PvdA, but in 2010 it was clear Balkenende had reached his Best-Before date. In addition, PvdA party leader Bos had been extremely effective in tarring CDA crown prince Verhagen during the fall of the Balkenende IV government, which caused a profound leadership crisis in the CDA. That crisis was only solved when parliamentary leader Van Haersma Buma was elected party leader last June.
The 2010 profile contains more information about its history and former electoral position.
So in 2010 the CDA was in a leadership crisis. Added to this was a crisis about the political strategy. Verhagen, not officially party leader but very influential, led the CDA wing that wanted a coalition with Wilders’s PVV. In the end the CDA agreed, but nearly one-third of the members who came to a special party congress in 2010, voted against.
The left wing of the party grudgingly supported the right-wing government, but was never happy with it. When Wilders quit the consultations about the austerity budget and thus caused the fall of government, the left wing felt liberated and basically took over the party. Not that the right-wingers were persecuted, but it became clear that the CDA would not tolerate another right-wing coalition.
New party leader Buma is doing ... not bad. He’s a very typical CDA man, a good debater, and knows how to remain vague enough not to anger any possible coalition partner. He may stabilise the party and even restrict the seat loss somehwat.
Still, the CDA is in a profound crisis. It may have lost its place in the centre of Dutch politics; partly because of its disastrous seat loss, partly because the party has moved so much to the right.
Despite being slated to lose roughly one-third of its seats, the CDA will likely be part of the next coalition, because it is available for both the left and the right. Only the Purple coalition between PvdA and VVD would exclude the CDA, but right now that coalition is not likely. And the CDA will not form a coalition with Wilders again.
I expect the CDA to veer slightly leftwards in the negotiations because it has to correct the huge rightward lurch of the last government. Thus I think the CDA is slightly more willing to reinforce a left-wing than a right-wing coalition. Still, most party members honestly prefer the VVD over the PvdA, and the CDA is moderate in all things, also in its leftward lurches. So centre-right it might be after all, if enough seats are available.
]]>Yesterday I found that there is a fifth pollster: Buzzpeil. It’s a “social media” pollster that doesn’t actually ask people what they’re going to vote, but instead looks at their tweets and Facebook posts — or something.
The poll is mainly remarkable for the complete absence of 50Plus — apparently the elderly don’t tweet enough. Also, a few weeks back the left block got 76 seats, something it’s never got in any other poll.
I don’t really believe in Buzzpeil’s methodology since there’s no way of correcting for those voters that don’t use social media, but I guess we should give them a chance and see what their error is after the elections. So I added it to the polls page.
The plan seems to be to publish a poll per day, but I’ll restrict myself to copying one per week. Oddly, the last published poll is from 20th of August, nearly a week ago. Let’s hope Buzzpeil will continue polling.
Translation of legend:
De Volkskrant and TNS-NIPO did interesting research about whether voters for the six big parties work or not. Unfortunately the research is not online; this picture is the best I got.
The take-aways are the following:
Take a look yourself; I hope the translation of the legend helps. (These terms are not easy to translate, I can tell you, so it sounds a bit stilted.)
If a new poll is released, the first thing you should do is look at the SGP — the ultra-orthodox protestant party that’s against women in politics, TV, and doing anything on Sundays. It will win two seats in the elections, but recently quite a number of polls from all pollsters gave the SGP three seats.
Why? Don’t the pollsters know that the SGP always wins two seats? Yes they do, but the problem here is turnout.
Back in 1998 the SGP won three seats because turnout was so low in that election — only about 70%, if I recall correctly. Since SGP people always vote no matter what, they can help their party to a third seat if the rest of the electorate is lukewarm.
As far as I can see that’s what’s been happening in the polls recently. The number of SGP voters remained stable, but the number of voters for other parties declined. Turnout is low, in other words.
It’s clear that this turnout problem exists mostly on the right. The left is doing well with a healthy score of about 70-74 seats. The right is doing lousy with a score in the low sixties.
That’s understandable: the Rutte government consisted only of right-wing parties, so right now disappointed right-wing voters have no place to go. (Well, to D66, but that’s not for everyone.) An abstention is logical.
Now the really interesting part is that the SGP is going back to two seats in three out of five polls. That’s not unexpected in itself, but I expected the parties on the right to do somewhat better now: apparently turnout is rising, which, with most non-voters residing on the right, should mean that the right gets more seats.
To be honest I don’t know what’s going on. It could be that the pollsters tweak their SGP scores a bit because the elections are looming near and they all know the SGP will win two seats. It could also be that significant numbers of right-wing voters shift to the left, but I don’t believe that. It could be that all pollsters underestimate the right, which is possible, but not really convincing.
Let’s wait for the next set of polls and then look at our canary again.
]]>In this entry we’ll take a closer look at new parties in parliament, and discover three rules:
Below is a table with all new parties that entered parliament since 1956, when the number of seats was increased to 150. In the middle column are the parties that won more than one seat, in the right column the parties that won one seat.
Parties that look like this were not succesful. Here I define succesful as staying in parliament for at least two more elections after the inital one.
The 1956, 1977, 1986, 1998, 2003, and 2010 elections brought no new parties into parliament and are not included the table.
| 1959 | PSP 2 | - |
| 1963 | BP 3 | GPV 1 |
| 1967 | D66 7 | - |
| 1971 | DS70 8 PPR 2 |
- |
| 1972 | - | |
| 1981 | RPF 2 | - |
| 1982 | - | EVP 1 |
| 1989 | - | |
| 1994 | SP 2 |
|
| 2002 | LN 2 |
- |
| 2006 | PVV 9 PvdD 2 | - |
| Cases | 13 | 6 |
| Success | 9 | 1 |
In total 19 new parties have entered parliament since 1956; 6 with one seat and 13 with more than one. Although the sample size is not very large, we can state with some degree of confidence that the majority of new parties starts with two or more seats.
In addition, the success rate for 1-seaters is disastrous: of the six parties, only vrijgemaakt-Gereformeerde GPV (now merged into the CU) was succesful according to my definition. All other parties were gone from parliament within two elections of their initial success.
In contrast, of the 13 larger new parties only 4 were unsuccesful. This number includes blockbuster LPF (List Pim Fortuyn) that dominated the 2002 elections but quickly fell apart for lack of a leader — Fortuyn having been murdered just before the 2002 elections. It disappeared silently in 2006 and thus does not meet my success criterion.
DS70 just barely qualifies for success: although it remained a minor power in the 1972 elections with 6 seats, it just barely made the threshold in 1977 with one single seat.
As to PVV and PvdD: they’ll certainly return after the next elections, which will be their third. So they’re succesful.
Thus we see that there’s a world of difference between one and two seats. One seat is truly marginal: possibly it’s caused by a fluke, and in any case the party hasn’t developed significant rapport with a segment of the Dutch electorate.
That changes with two seats (i.e. about 130,000 votes). Then it clearly represents something that Dutch voters feel attracted to — enough voters to become a stable, though small, factor in parliament.
It seems likely that 50Plus will win two seats — possibly even more. If it does, it’s likely to become a stable factor in Dutch politics for at least a few elections. If it wins only one seat, though, it’s slated for quick removal and will basically have failed.
What about pollster errors? Do pollsters ever predict seats for new parties that don’t get them, or no seats for parties that do get them?
I only have data from 1998 on, which can be found at the bottom of the polls page. A clear pattern emerges.
In fact, in 2002 and 2006 all pollsters agreed that the newcomers (LPF and LN in 2002; PVV and PvdD in 2006) would win seats. They disagreed on the number of seats, and seriously underestimated the PVV (as they did again in 2010), but the bare fact that these parties would make it into parliament was clear well before the elections.
Of course the fact that a new party shows up in the polls matters a lot. Dutch voters don’t particularly like to waste their votes on very small parties that won’t make it into parliament, so even though they might be sympathetic to a tiny party they’ll only vote for it if there’s a decent chance it’ll make it — if it’s polling one or more seats, in other words.
This is not good news for the Pirate Party. Its single seat in Peil.nl is not enough: all pollsters have to agree the Pirates are going to make it into parliament, and that’s currently not the case.
I think the 2012 elections will be for the Pirate Party what the 2003 elections were for animal-rights PvdD: the election where, though they don’t win a seat, they show that they are a growing force. Let’s call it 30- to 40,000 votes — too few for a seat (that needs about 65,000), but many more than a tiny party usually gets.
Then in the next elections people sympathetic to the Pirates will remember, and decide to cast their vote for them. That’s what happened with the PvdD: surprisingly strong showing in 2003, though no seats; in 2006 two seats and success.
So the Pirates will have to wait for the next elections, but then they’ll win at least two seats and go on to success — probably.
]]>Today we’ll continue with left-wing SP.
]]>The SP is about to emerge as the major party on the left after a protracted struggle with a PvdA that moved to the centre in the Purple period (1994-2002). After the PvdA had made itself impossible by eagerly embracing free-market fundamentalism, the SP steadily gained seats, booked a major victory in 2006 that it was unable to capitalise on, fell back in 2010, and is now poised for victory.
Led by the charismatic Jan Marijnissen from the early eighties to 2008, the party initially had trouble finding a new party leader. Agnes Kant turned out not to be right choice, and just before the 2010 elections she was replaced by Emile Roemer, who kept the 2010 defeat limited. Meanwhile he has become one of the most highly-regarded politicians, and although the right is against his prime-ministership as a matter of general principle, the man himself has few detractors.
The SP has an important trump card in Roemer, and is certain it will end up in the government coalition this time. In fact, it seems likely Roemer will be the next prime minister.
(Incidentally, there’s a rumour that Roemer doesn’t speak English. That is a source of shame for any Dutchman, but especially for a future prime minister. One hopes he speaks at least one other foreign language.)
The 2010 profile gives more details about the SP’s history as a maoist party that gradually became mainstream and less extreme.
I still count the SP as a protest party, and its campaign so far definitely has its protesty moments. Recently Roemer said that, with him as prime minister, the country would disregard any European budget rule. Predictably, he was attacked by most of the political centre, led by D66, and he backtracked a bit.
This was obviously an attempt to lure PVV voters to another protest party, and as such it might even succeed. The SP is playing a careful balancing game between protest party and traditional compromise party, and of course the protesty bit comes in before the elections, and the compromise after.
So t’s extremely unlikely the SP will continue this harsh line, because it wouldn’t be able to find coalition partners (except for the PVV). In other words, I expect the SP to become a lot more compromise-minded after the elections.
Being harsh now has its disadvantages — some moderate voters will surely turn to other parties, and other parties may be less forgiving after the elections. I’m especially thinking of D66 here.
But for now the strategy will work in making the SP the second-largest party at least, and possibly the largest.
The SP’s outlook is rosy. As I said before it has succesfully instigated a prime-minister race against the VVD, which will help it draw voters from PvdA and GL, and once the elections are over it has a far better chance to form a coalition than the VVD. So Roemer is quite likely to become the next prime minister.
The only way of stopping him is a grand coalition of PvdA, CDA, VVD, and D66, but that coalition has its own dangers: the difference between the catch-all parties will become meaningless in the eye of the voters, and they’ll all lose seats come the next elections. So I don’t expect this to happen.
]]>Today we’ll continue with centrist D66.
]]>D66 was founded in 1966 to change the Dutch political landscape. Although few formal changes have taken place, D66 introduced the concept of a Purple coalition with PvdA and VVD in 1994, and Dutch politics haven’t found their equilibrium ever since. That counts as a change.
After being part of government from 1994 to 2002, and again 2003 to 2006, the party performed an incredible shrinking act, eventually ending up at 3 seats in 2006. A spell in the opposition did wonders: it grew to 10 in 2010 and is expected to grow to roughly 15 in a few weeks.
This is in fact a general rule: D66 does badly after being in government, and quite well after being in the opposition. It’s supposed to be the reasonable alternative to the other centre parties, but that is best appreciated if it’s not responsible for government policy.
The 2010 profile contains more information about D66’s history and natural electorate.
One of the biggest questions for the Democrats is where they’re going to place themselves in the Dutch political spectrum. Historically, there were two schools of thought: those who believe D66 belongs on the right wing of the left block, and those who believe it is a true centre party, able to rule with the right as well as with the left.
This year it’s clear that D66 voters, at least, belong more on the right than on the left. Recent Peil.nl research shows a 69-17 majority of D66 voters preferring Rutte above Roemer as prime minister, and voters also go right with questions about the budget deficit and such. Party leader Pechtold is largely catering to these voters by positioning D66 somewhat away from the SP and closer to the VVD.
This has electoral motives: true liberals who’re not happy with the VVD’s flirtation with Wilders might jump on the Democratic ship, while there are far less socialists who’d do so — even if the SP weren’t on a winning streak.
The question is whether D66 will remove itself from the left block altogether and become a true centre party. Right now we can’t answer that. The only thing that’s certain is that D66 is currently not behaving as part and parcel of the left block.
D66’s outlook is fairly good. It’ll likely win seats; possibly as much as 5 or 6. The only danger is the prime-minister race that’s currently brewing: D66 is in extra danger here because it could lose voters to both the left and the right. If it weathers this crisis (and right now it seems it will) it’ll be in a decent position on 13th of September.
The coalition game will be tricky this time around. D66 will immediately be confronted with the biggest question: will it form a coalition with the SP? D66 is necessary for any centre-left coalition, just as the SP is. But do the Democrats want that?
Roemer recently made some anti-European remarks, and Pechtold was the first to criticise him for that. That points to a widening rift. On the other hand, rifts are supposed to widen just before the elections, only to shrink drastically just after.
D66’s problem is that there is no real alternative to a centre-left coalition. Neither the Kunduz coalition (VVD+CDA+D66+CU+GL) nor a workable Purple variant is likely to win a majority in parliament, so that the Democrats may be in a position of having to make the best of a lousy hand.
]]>Today we’ll continue with green and left GL.
]]>GL is a green, left-wing party that’s in a profound identity crisis. Originally a merger party, it stood clearly on the left wing for much of its existence. Recently, however, the party leadership tried to move it closer to the centre, stating that GL should become a progressive-liberal party not unlike D66. The problem, of course, is that D66 is already occupying that position in the political landscape. Therefore the move is backfiring.
GL remains a witness party first and foremost. It is unable to see why the other parties won’t see that it is right, and this air of superiority is by far the most annoying party feature. It was involved in the 2010 coalition negotiations, and one report says that instead of negotiating, then-leader Halsema mainly tried to convince the other parties (purple VVD, PvdA, and D66) that her programme was better than theirs. This is fine in a witness party, but unhelpful when it comes to negotiating a coalition.
The 2010 profile has some more details on GL’s earlier history.
GL is losing its traditional electorate without winning new voters elsewhere. The main reasons are Kunduz and the Spring Agreement of April.
In 2011 GL supported the sending of Dutch troops to the Afghan province of Kunduz. Rutte had gone shopping with the opposition after Wilders refused to support the Afghan mission, and ended up adding D66, the CU, and GL to his VVD+CDA coalition. This combination became known as the Kunduz coalition.
The problem is that there’s a strong pacifist current in GL — one of the parties GL was created from was the pacifist-socialist party, and that’s still noticeable. The pacifists weren’t too happy with the party leadership’s action.
In April, after the fall of the Rutte government, something had to be done about the austerity budget. D66, CU, and GL took the initiative for reaching out to VVD and CDA, and measures were passed. Thus the Kunduz coalition was reborn and the Spring Agreement passed.
Still, GL did not prosper. In fact, it fell quite a bit in the polls from 8 to 5 seats. It seems its voters aren’t happy and are deserting in droves. This goes further than just Kunduz and the Spring Agreements. The voters don’t like the liberal centrist course party leadership set, and they certainly don’t like the logical conclusion: participating in a centre-right coalition.
Quite a few friends of mine are traditional GL voters, but all of them are hesitating this time — something they’ve never done before. One worded it best: “I always voted Green Left for the left bit, and not for the green bit.” And it’s the left bit that’s the problem right now, while party after party pays at least some attention to the green bits, so it is not a unique GL selling point any more.
In addition, GL has a leadership problem. Universally applauded party leader Femke Halsema stepped down in late 2010, to be succeeded by Jolande Sap. Sap hasn’t convinced. She led the Kunduz and Spring negotiations and is thus very much implicated in the new GL strategy.
She appeared to be a shoe-in for heading the party list and thus being reaffirmed as leader, but MP Tofik Dibi, of Moroccan descent, issued a challenge. Although Sap was re-elected by a comfortable margin, GL didn’t handle this crisis very well, with Dibi’ candidacy first being disallowed by a party committee before being allowed.
Since then reports of internal trouble have surfaced, and Sap has been accused of bad, overbearing leadership. Others say that everything is peachy and Dibi, especially, cooperates fully with Sap. You decide which story to believe.
GL’s outlook is lousy. Although the coalition game could have favoured it even more than in 2010, it seems likely that GL simply won’t have the seats to be relevant. SP+PvdA+D66+CDA is enough for a centre-left government. A left-wing government reinforced by the CU would need GL, but its chances are slight, especially because D66 will prefer centre-left over left.
As to Sap, her head will roll after the elections.
]]>Also, the bottom of the polls page now contains a comparison of the final polls in 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2010 with the election result, which allows us to calculate the errors the pollsters made. The Politieke Barometer scores best, with on average 7.8 seats misassigned, then comes Peil.nl with 9.5, TNS-NIPO with 10, and finally Een Vandaag with 11 (though that last number is derived from only one election). Also, study the 2003 polls and election outcome. They’re relevant for this year’s.
These elections have become a classic prime-minister race. SP and VVD are well ahead of all the others: the difference between them and the third-largest is more than 10 seats in all polls but the Barometer, where it is 6.
SP leader Roemer and VVD leader and prime minister Rutte are doing everything they can to cast the elections as a struggle between the two of them. Who do you want to head the new government: left-wing Roemer or right-wing Rutte?
They are each other’s staunchest allies. They can only create the prime-minister-race dynamics together, and both stand to win from it. Also, they’d prefer not to go to big debates where four to eight other party leaders will also be present. That’s why they politely declined to come to a recent debate, which caused of a lot of acerbic comments.
The purpose of the race is not stealing votes from each other: SP and VVD are pretty far apart in the political spectrum and there are hardly any voters hesitating between the two. No, the idea is that SP and VVD can suck voters from the other parties in their block. Left-wingers, even if their preference is PvdA or GL, will want Roemer to win the race and thus consider a strategic vote for the SP. The same on the right, where CDA and Wilders voters may switch to a strategic vote for Rutte.
This prime-minister race is a well-established pattern in Dutch politics. They most recently occurred between Balkenende (CDA) and Bos (PvdA) in 2003, and the 1986 and 1977 elections also saw this dynamic. Back then, of course, the two largest parties were PvdA and CDA, and the very fact that SP and VVD have taken over these positions is a change of epic proportions.
The polls are divided: three out of four show the SP in the lead, while the Politieke Barometer disagrees and shows the VVD in the lead.
Now one of the curious facets of the race is that you want to be in second position in the final polls. It doesn’t matter how reliable they are; what you want is the press loudly repeating the polls and telling everyone how you will come in second after your competitor.
Suppose the polls don’t change and most give Rutte second place. At that point in time, right-wingers who hesitate between a strategic VVD vote and a vote from the heart for CDA or PVV, will have an extra incentive to vote strategically. Simultaneously, left-wingers, who see that Roemer is going to win anyway, will be more likely to vote from the heart for PvdA or GL. The net result is that the VVD will come in first and the SP second.
This is exactly what happened in 2003. Back then all polls gave the PvdA a one- or two-seat lead over the CDA, but when all votes were counted the CDA had a two-seat lead over the PvdA, which disappeared into the opposition.
Unfortunately, this time around the race is fake. I feel that Rutte has little chance to become prime minister again, even if he finishes first.
Let’s say Rutte wins. Now he has to create a coalition. The CDA is a sure bet — the christian-democrats are flexible enough to do anything, and they have a genuine desire for a coalition with Rutte’s VVD. Wilders’s PVV is out — after the debacle of the Rutte government nobody trusts them any more, least of all the VVD.
VVD+CDA will not be enough for a majority, so Rutte will have to shop for coalition partners on the left. Basically, what he needs to do is re-form the Kunduz coalition which also supported the Spring Agreements: VVD+CDA+D66+CU+GL. Political commenters see this five-party coalition as a serious possibility.
I disagree. First of all, by entering such a coalition GL, which is already in a downward spiral, will sign its death warrant for reasons we’ll discuss later. Second, the Kunduz coalition simply does not have a majority, and hasn’t had one for months in any of the polls.
Besides, even if Rutte managed to form a coalition his VVD would come under relentless attack from Wilders on the right. Wilders will suck quite a few seats from the VVD in the next elections.
So all in all I believe that Rutte will become opposition leader, regardless of the election outcome. Oh, he’ll have to make a token effort, but as soon as GL says No we’ll switch to the left.
Compare Rutte’s difficult position to Roemer’s. Roemer doesn’t have a major competitor on his left flank, and he has a likely coalition in SP+PvdA+D66+CDA. This coalition has a solid majority in all polls for the last few months. True, negotiations with CDA and especially D66 will be difficult, but these parties will see there’s no real alternative and succumb with decent grace.
So whoever wins the prime-minister race, it seems likely Roemer will become prime minister. That’s his goal, the SP is more than ready to govern (and is willing to make the appropriate concessions), so my money is still on an SP-led left or centre-left government, most likely SP+PvdA+D66+CDA.
]]>Van Haersma Buma has been elected CDA party leader. Surprisingly, he got 51% of the vote in the first round, against 26% for “outsider” Mona Keijzer. Thus a second round was not necessary.
Surprisingly, we’ll also get a GL party leader election. Everybody assumed current party leader Sap would keep the job, but MP Tofik Dibi, of Moroccan descent and fairly well-known for a backbencher, announced his intent to run for party leader, too.
This took GL completely by surprise. It seems nobody had counted on a second candidate. First Dibi was attacked for announcing his intent openly, then the party leadership promised an election, and then the candidate committee declared that Dibi was not suited to become leader. After a storm of protests the party leadership reiterated its promise of an election. Meanwhile it turns out that two other people had applied for the party leadership, but were both rejected by the committee.
This is not good. The CDA is shown to have more internal democracy than GL, and it was clear that everybody was completely unprepared for the possibility of a second candidate. Obviously the party leadership wanted to appoint Sap silently, but that failed.
Meanwhile polls suggest that Sap is still supported by about 75% of the GL members, but the damage has been done. GL has dropped to a historic low of 4 seats in the last Peil.nl poll. We’ll have to see if Sap (or possibly Dibi) can restore confidence in the party.
A while back prime minister and VVD party leader Rutte opened the attack on Wilders by pointing out that a vote on the PVV is a lost vote: whatever else happens, Wilders won’t end up even near government.
Today PvdA party leader Samsom announced he wanted to become prime minister, and he didn’t mind a coalition with the SP at all. He followed up by some attacks on the Kunduz coalition that made the austerity agreement possible. Thus the PvdA reiterates its desire to move left, although I still wonder if Samsom is the right man for this job.
Still, we finally see the correct reaction against the extreme parties by both VVD and PvdA: move somewhat toward the flanks in the hope of recapturing lost voters. So far it’s not really clear that the new strategy is working: the VVD is dropping slightly, while the PvdA holds stable but with less seats than the SP.
The current hot potato is the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM. This new fund will hold a lot of ready money that can be used to bail out banks or countries. The Netherlands is supposed to give 4.6 billion euros straight away, and a guarantee for another 35 billion in case it’s needed.
It’s clear that the ESM will pass parliament. VVD, CDA, PvdA, D66 and GL are all in favour, and that gives the ESM 102 out of 150 seats. The anti-Europe parties are against: SP, PVV, CU, SGP, and PvdD. This clearly shows who’s where, and also that while the PvdA is moving leftward it still remains pro-Europe.
Which reminds me: I have a new theory. As far as I can see Europe and austerity are one and the same thing in the minds of many voters. Europe currently uses its transnational power to enforce austerity, but that might change, and it might separate the debates about European vs. national power, and austerity vs. stimulus. I think that would be very healthy, and might even convince some SP and PVV voters (and anti-Europe voters in other countries) that Europe isn’t necessarily evil.
I’m expecting the European leadership to take a turn toward stimulus, mostly spurred on by the new French president Hollande. Germany will object, but the German policies of the last years show neither vision nor results, so Merkel will be in big trouble. She singularly failed to rise to the occasion of the gravest crisis in her term in office, and will pay the price later on.
To return to Dutch politics at its most narrow: the 50Plus party is in trouble. One of its senators accused the two most important leaders of incompetence, cronyism and what not. So far there’s now follow-up to this news, but it could spell trouble.
Right now 50Plus holds two seats in my average of the polling, but that’s because Peil.nl has gone very annoying and introduced an “Other party” category, which currently holds two seats. I’m assuming both of them go to 50Plus, since one seat for either Brinkman or the Pirates would be big news, but I’m not toally sure.
Peil.nl, please restore the exact party scores. No “others.” The situation is complicated enough as it is.
]]>Today we have to jump back to the bottom of the list because a new party has emerged as a vehicle for dissident PVV MP Brinkman. It’s uncertain whether the party will make it into parliament, but anything is possible right now.
]]> History and party profileThe OBP is essentially the same as the old TON that was so easily discarded in the 2010 elections: a vehicle for a well-known dissident from a right-wing party. The OBP is Hero Brinkman, much as the TON was Rita Verdonk and the PVV is Geert Wilders. Of course, Wilders is very clever and canny. Verdonk wasn’t. Whether Brinkman is remains to be seen, but the odds are against him.
Hero Brinkman was one of the original nine PVV MPs elected in 2006. Just before the 2010 elections he called for more internal democracy within the PVV. Wilders reacted quite mildly — he could not afford internal arguments just before the elections. Brinkman returned to parliament, but nothing came of his ideas about democratic procedures or creating a youth group (which are pretty much part and parcel of regular Dutch parties).
Meanwhile Brinkman made the news by being rude to the government of the Netherlands Antilles, and by allegedly hitting a barman in the face. He later admitted to having an alcohol problem.
Brinkman’s critique of the PVV’s authoritarian structure, with sole member Geert Wilders deciding everything, was the reason he split off in March. He also objected against Wilders’s penchant for attacking Muslims, and more recently Eastern Europeans. That may sound noble, but it could also mean Brinkman hasn’t been paying attention to his own political party in the last six years.
Whatever. Let’s say it’s just power play on the extreme right, as has happened so often in the past. It’s the first time it happens to the PVV, though — Wilders has held out for six years, which is a record.
Does the OBF differ from the PVV at all? One would expect a democratic structure and less stuff about Muslims, but the party is still too new to truly judge.
In any case, Brinkman is creating a party list (in great haste, so nobody will be vetted) and has already had some offers of help, though very little money. But he remains
Will Brinkman retain his seat? In one poll (Politieke Barometer 27 April) he did, but in the next one he disappeared.
Brinkman’s best chance is chaos in the PVV. If, say, there were more split-offs, and Wilders would lose some control, Brinkman might capture a few extreme-right voters, but he’s not Wilders, and everybody knows it.
Right now the question is whether 65,000 Dutch will vote for him in the absence of trouble in the PVV. I think the answer is No.
Even if the OBP enters parliament it won’t end up in the coalition. Nobody’s interested in a small extreme party as they are in large extreme parties. Besides, there will be no right-wing coalition, and any other coalition will reject the OBP as they do the PVV. Brinkman’s doomed to a spell in the opposition.
]]>There are two main items this week: the fall-out of the austerity agreement, and the CDA leadership election. But first, a sad anniversary.
]]> 6 May 2002: Fortuyn’s murderToday it’s exactly 10 years ago that Pim Fortuyn was murdered by a crazed animal-rights activist. As so many Dutch, I remember exactly where I was when I heard: I was ordering some falafel in a take-away near my house, when the radio said the election campaigns were suspended out of respect for the victim. “What the hell?” I thought, “which victim?” and it took about ten minutes before it became clear that Fortuyn was in fact murdered.
Today there was some attention in the press, with De Volkskrant re-running the famous 2002 interview in which Fortuyn attacked Islam. See also this NRC article, where the famous debate after the March 2002 local elections is embedded. Here Fortuyn destroyed the Purple parties while courting CDA leader Balkenende, and it was considered a watershed.
However, Geert Wilders, who is Fortuyn’s political heir, was entirely silent on the subject. Odd.
The results of the austerity agreement and the revival of the Kunduz-coalition proceed more or less as expected. D66, GL, and the CU are taking the lion’s share of the praise, and they attack the PvdA for being too rigid to join the coalition. This is an especially important point for GL leader Sap, who stands to lose most in case her voters dislike the agreement. The other parties, including CDA and VVD, broadly agree.
Now the parties on the left attack the CDA for flip-flopping. First the CDA defended Wilders’s toys, like forbidding burkas and double nationality, and now CDA interior minister Spies suddenly announces she won’t defend them any more.
Nobody has the slightest doubt that the CDA is very glad it can turn away from these issues, but it’s still being attacked for defending them in the first place while the old coalition was still in power. The CDA defends itself by pointing out the exigencies of coalition: sometimes you have to defend something that’s not your own idea, or wish, because you’ve reached an agreement with your partners. That’s true, but still it’s the CDA that’s most vulnerable here because it sits in any sort of coalition, and thus flip-flops most.
So far the VVD is keeping a low profile, leaving the other parties to fight it out. On the whole this is a sensible decision. Of the three parties of the old coalition, the VVD is least tarnished by the fall of government. Only now it becomes apparent to me how cleverly Rutte has managed to make the main fights during his government take place between CDA and PVV, with the VVD smiling in the middle. The VVD is still roughly at the 31 seats it won last time, and that’s not bad at all.
The PvdA is once again in trouble. It’s the main loser of the austerity agreement: everybody feels it should have been involved, but was too rigid and unyielding when the time came to be flexible in negotiations. This is nothing new: I’ve heard one (communist) MP from the sixties and seventies complain about this very issue. The miracle is that the PvdA has a solid block of voters left.
The SP and the smaller parties survived unscathed. They had little to do with the agreement, since nobody expected them to participate. The SP is too left-wing, the small parties too small. Still, this means that the SP can yet again pick up a few seats from the PvdA.
And Wilders? He’s ... managing. Some expected him to lose a lot of voters when he dropped government, but so far that isn’t really happening. Wilders’s actions of the last weeks were primarily aimed at his own voters, and once again he seems to have understood them better than anyone else. He’s lost any chance of being in the next coalition, but that’s fine: the PVV is a natural opposition party, anyway.
Last week’s polls clearly showed gain for four of the five parties, with the VVD being the exception. The voters still like the fact that they came to an agreement. PvdA once again loses to SP, and that’s pretty much it.
No doubt we’ll be in for a lot of change in the next few weeks, but so far the voters are unsure in which direction they’ll jump. And last week was a holiday week, which doesn’t help.
The party that’s going to be in the news for the next month is the CDA. For the first time the christian-democrats will hold an open election for the party leadership. Meanwhile the candidacies are in, and no less than twelve people will run for leader. The best-known of them is current parliamentary leader Van Haersma Buma, but interior minister Spies also runs, as does agriculture secretary of state Bleker (a right-winger who’s made several gaffes over the past years), interim manager Wintels (the main outsider candidate), and several less well known people.
The missing candidate is finance minister De Jager, who already was one of the most popular CDA politicians but is also credited with the austerity agreement, where he negotiated as the government representative and shared in the wave of goodwill. Party chairwoman Peetoom asked him to become a candidate, but he refused — as he has several times already.
On Monday the party will announce which of the twelve candidates are actually accepted (a murky process that frankly I didn’t know was going to take place until I read about it today), and then there will be several public debates. CDA members may vote until 18th of May, and if there’s no candidate with a majority a run-off round will be held between the two best-scoring candidates that will end on 1st of June. So that’s the latest date by which we’ll know who will lead the CDA for at least the next few years.
But for today’s real political news we’ll have to look to France, which elects a president, and Greece and the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which elect parliaments:
No doubt the results of France and Schleswig-Holstein will influence Dutch politics somewhat. The battle lines for and against austerity are being drawn here, too, while pollster Maurice de Hond announced that the Dutch Pirate Party is hovering near one seat (as is, by the way, PVV dissident Brinkman’s OBP). If the Pirate Party actually does win a seat in any of the polls I will properly introduce it to my readers.
Adieu austerity.
]]>Government formally fells hardly a day after Wilders walked out of the discussion. Strictly speaking that wasn’t necessary since it hadn’t yet lost confidence of parliament, and could possibly find new supporters, but apparently everybody from prime minister Rutte down considered it the best option.
Immediately after the fall of government there was a short, sharp discusion on the date of the new elections. Dutch law (barely) permit an election in late June, but many parties opted for September instead, with the argument that small parties (such as PVV dissident Brinkman’s) would still have time to register and create a candidate list.
Generally those parties that are doing well in the polls wanted a June date, with those that are doing not so well arguing for September. (Obviously, July and August are not an option, since a significant part of the electorate will be on a beach somewhere during the Sacred Summer Holiday.)
In the end it was decided that elections will be held on Wednesday 12th of September. So that’s that. That will still interfere a little with the summer holiday in some parts of the country, but even the latest cluster of provinces will return to work on 2nd of September.
Still, there’s something to be said for quick elections, and especially SP leader Roemer made that point. The fundamental problem right now is whether to go along with the austerity demands of the EU or not. And that requires a mandate from the voters.
It will be remembered that the cause of the fall of government was the austerity discussions that Wilders walked out of because he’s too much a populist to agree with substantial reductions in the welfare state; especially the pensions.
Apart from the fall of government the problem was that the country did not have a new, austere budget to present to the European Commission. The deficit has to be below 3% of GDP next year according to the new, strict European rules that were pushed heavily last year, exactly by the Rutte government that failed to push them through in its own country. Furthermore, the new budget had to be sent to Brussels on Monday 30th of April (tomorrow) at the latest.
So Rutte was in a double quandary, and from last weekend on it was clear he’d have to look for alternative support in parliament. Discussions were started with the (former) opposition parties, and pretty quickly an ad-hoc consortium of D66, GL, and CU declared itself willing to discuss possibilities with VVD and CDA, who still supported the original plans.
This five-party coalition was also the one that was formed about a year ago to agree to the extension of the Dutch military mission in the Afghan province of Kunduz, which Wilders opposed from the start, and it is therefore named the Kunduz coalition. This name could stick, so it’s one to remember.
In the record time of two days a deal was reached that contained the bulk of the proposed austerity measures, minus a few concessions to the three-party consortium, and it was sent off to Brussels in the nick of time.
In addition all parties gleefully cooperated in ripping apart a few PVV points, such as the animal cops (the so-called “guinea pig police” that were supposed to concentrate on cruelty against animals and was met with ridicule by all parties but PVV and animal-rights PvdD), savings on cultural subsidies and on development relations, and other right-wing hobbies.
Thus the political situation turned around entirely within the space of five days, and blame and praise started to be handed out.
The praise mostly went to the five-party centre-right coalition that saved austerity: VVD, CDA, D66, GL, and CU. The blame mostly went to PVV and PvdA, with the SP being judged neutral.
Both Peil.nl and the Politieke Barometer released new polls. They agree on some points and disagree on others. Basically Peil.nl sees a huge six-seat shift toward the Kunduz coalition, while the Politieke Barometer sees a more modest two-seat shift.
Let’s take a quick look at the rise and fall of the various parties:
The trickiest position of all is held by the PvdA. The social-democrats recently elected Diederik Samsom as their leader, and he indicated he was going to move leftward to the SP in order to recapture the party’s old base.
As a result Samsom was not very interested in cooperating in the budget talks, even though the five parties insist he was invited. The PvdA rejects the fixation on the 3% deficit, and considers too much austerity a danger for economic growth, as do the SP and the PVV. (I agree with this point of view, by the way, which is the main reason I’m going to vote SP this time around.)
In theory the PvdA has done exactly the correct thing for recapturing dissatisfied left-wing voters, but in practice it doesn’t seem to have worked very well. The party is down to 19 seats in the Peil.nl poll (6 seats down from last week, just before the fall of government), although the Barometer still shows 25 seats (2 down from last week).
The blame game is already being played within the party, with the social-liberal right wing squaring off against the more populist left wing, both claiming to represent the best direction for the party to go.
As far as I can see the problem is that Samsom is just not credible as a left-wing leader. He’s too much of a centrist intellectual, and has the air of someone looking for a prime-ministership instead of defending the interests of common people. He’s too much of a Purple boy, in other words, even though he was elected to parliament in 2003, after Purple ended. Former party leader Bos had the same problem, but was eventually able to overcome it. That took time, though — time Samsom doesn’t have before September. Besides, Samsom was neatly out-debated by CDA leader Van Haersma Buma, the traditional enemy, during the discussion on the austerity budget.
Which leads us to the final point: the CDA leadership. It will be remembered that the CDA hasn’t had a formal party leader since Balkenende resigned directly after the June 2010 elections. A triumvirate of vice-prime-minister Verhagen in government, Van Haersma Buma in parliament, and chairwoman Peetoom in the party itself led the CDA, but now that elections are looming near a leader must be chosen: somebody has to take the top spot on the CDA candidate list on the ballot form.
Verhagen declined a spot on the CDA candidate list, meaning he can’t become party leader, either. That’s understandable: he was tarred quite efficiently by then-PvdA leader Bos during the fall of Balkenende IV in 2010, and his reputation never recovered. Besides, he’s too much associated with the PVV coalition, which was never universally accepted in the CDA and is now even less popular. It was clear from the outset he never made a chance to become the top dog, and he drew his conclusions (possibly aided by a behind-the-scenes push from party leadership).
The party decided on an open election by the members, the results of which should be known on 1st of June. Two very popular CDA leaders, finance minister De Jager, who led the succesful five-party negotiations, and former Traffic minister Eurlings, who (temporarily) left politics in 2010, declined nomination.
Parliamentary leader Van Haersma Buma seems to have the best chances, certainly because there’s no other good candidate right now. It seems to me that the CDA leadership may have decided on an open election, but will make very sure there’s only one viable candidate: the one agreed upon by the leadership. Still, an upset is always possible in an open system.
Despite all the questions fired by breathless journalists at the five Kunduz coalition parties on whether this might be a good coalition for after the elections, I do not believe we’ll get a centre-right coalition. Instead, my theory is that we’re heading for centre-left: PvdA, CDA, SP, D66, possibly reinforced by GL and/or CU.
My reasoning is as follows:
Of course plenty could change before the elections, but for now this is the reasoning I’ll stick to.
And it could be that a centre-left government will do something about the ridiculous austerity rash that’s spreading all over Europe — possibly in conjunction with likely future socialist French president Hollande. What’s in a name?
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