Dutch Elections

I’ve written before about Dutch politics.  It’s looking like we will have elections soon, so I thought I would try to give anyone out there interested enough information so you could follow along if you want.

The Netherlands has a multi-party system that normally results in coalition governments of some kind.  Unlike the US or UK, we don’t really have just a few parties, one of which is certain to win, but rather a number of smaller parties who’s popularity ebbs and flows.

At the moment we have a coalition government formed of a number of smaller right wing parties.  This coalition resulted because in the last election the popularity of the larger parties faltered, and many smaller factional parties got the majority of the vote, with nearly a perfect 50/50 left right split.  It’s not a strong coalition, and a particularly contentious and unpredictable member is the PVV, Geert Wilders anti-immigrant party.

At the moment the Dutch government is busy trying to pass their budget, together with austerity measures needed to bring government spending within European norms.  Broad support of as many political parties as possible is necessary for this, but especially those within the government coalition.  As of yesterday, the PVV had walked out of these negotiations, and if they do not return, the austerity measures are not likely to pass, and this will almost certainly cause the collapse of the government and trigger new elections.  Even if they do pass the austerity measures, the government is not expected to last much longer.

Okay, so what happens during and after an election?

You can find the current public opinion polls here.

Okay, the blue bars on the left are the current Dutch lower house seats from the last elections.  The red bars are the polls from about 3 weeks ago, and the cream colored bars are the most recent polling.  If you hover your mouse over the bars, the number on the bottom is the number of seats.  A coalition needs to be formed of at least 76 seats in order to form a cabinet and government.

The major parties are:

VVD: These are the fiscal liberals, with liberal having the European meaning conservative or right wing, unlike what it means in north America.  This is a center-right to right party, with a strong sense of needing to keep the rich people rich.  In the past they have been part of left wing coalitions, and for example recently supported legalizing euthanasia and gay marriage, but mostly they favor more conservative social policies and are more likely to form political coalitions with parties more to the right.

PvdA:  This is the Labour party.  Historically they support collective bargaining rights, and tend to be center-left on the political scale.  Like their counterparts the Democrats in the US, and similar parties in other parts of the world, they have been having a bit of an identity crisis lately.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between them and politicians on the right, because they all vote for the same policies.  They were in a coalition with VVD several years ago, that was popular at the time, but in hindsight most people considered a failure because the PvdA did not do a good enough job expressing themselves.  They were in the news lately because the former leader of the party decided the party should be more left, but couldn’t find support for this within the party so he stepped down.  It’s looking pretty likely they will find themselves in another coalition with VVD after the next elections.

PVV:  This is the anti-immigrant party headed by Geert Wilders.  A small percentage of the country actually votes for them, but because of the multi-party system here they are able to have a lot of influence in the government.  Pretty much none of the other parties want to work with them, but in the end some will probably have to.

CDA:  The Christian Democrats.  They are popular with Christian voters, and for a number of years were the largest party in the country.  While they are socially conservative, mostly they are just slimy politicians and increasingly people are realizing this and not voting for them.

SP:  Socialist Party.  This party hasn’t been in a government within recent memory, but they are doing very well in the polls.  Many people don’t want to vote for PvdA any more, because no one knows if they are left or right, and so are choosing SP instead.  Most of the other parties do not want to work with SP, because they are considered unpredictable, but it seems pretty likely they may be part of the next government.

D66:  This is a center-right party, non-religious and always small.  They are similar to CDA, but are sometimes thought of as more honest.  The other parties probably consider them untrustworthy, because they caused the collapse of a recent government coalition and triggered elections.

The other parties are probably too small to be considered serious contenders, but if anyone is interested in hearing about them, let me know.

After the elections, the party with the most votes will initiate coalition talks with the other parties.  If they don’t succeed, the party with the second largest number of votes tries, and so on.  If no coalition can be found, new elections are called again.