Quick take! Dutch election results shock
How the far right took the lead
Exit poll results from today’s elections have Geert Wilders’ far right Party for Freedom (PVV) unexpectedly blowing up expectations and becoming by far the biggest winner with 35 seats. Polls for months showed a relatively neck-and-neck battle between two center right parties, the VVD (former prime minister Mark Rutte’s party), the new kid on the block NSC (headed by Pieter Omtzigt), and the left coalition of the GroenLinks-PvdA (Green Party-Labor Party).
The media had been presenting this election as a boring, middle of the road race, between boring, middle of the road parties a couple of clicks away from the center, one way or another. Party leaders were cordial at debates; the debates didn’t feel like debates. It seemed to be a given that the next coalition government would be formed with the VVD, NSC, and GroenLinks-PvdA.
It might have been precisely this assumed predictability that until last week made space for Wilders. He rose in the polls with a renewed push against asylum seekers, (while the immigration debate amongst the then most-popular parties had shifted to the less controversial issue of foreign students and expats) and the status-quo of the election itself. He stoked fear about the possibility of a left-leaning coalition, and said in a debate on Monday:
A vote for NSC or VVD could mean that GroenLinks-PvdA will have control, but there is only one way to prevent that: make the PVV as big as possible.
Such an overwhelming vote in favor of Wilders might have been a reflection of a serious —and expected—fear of the left.
However, I say, I admit, the night after the election, actually knowing what happened… maybe this result, or something like it, was a little predictable.
The BBB (the “farmer party” lead by Caroline van der Plas) exploded in popularity earlier this year, most importantly promising to protect farmers from environmental regulations, and fell out of favor just as fast. This fall, she lost her mojo as political media darling to Peter Omtzigt (NSC), and after a few scandals and bad interviews, it started to seem that her party did not have its shit together, in a prime-ministerial, coalition-leading sense.
But the BBB falling from grace clearly did not mean that the conservative, nationalistic, anti-immigration, anti-EU impulse behind the BBB vote did too. It lived on, and shifted to the PVV, particularly to the familiar face of Wilders, who apparently told a better right-wing story in the last few weeks than anyone else.
Wilders has been in the House of Representatives since 2002. He has a global profile, and is routinely referred to as the “Dutch Trump” in the international press. He is in favor of Nexit (Dutch Brexit), closing the border to asylum seekers, and banning Islam (although he says this is no longer a priority).
It’s important to note that in the Dutch system, Wilders getting 35 seats does not mean he will automatically become prime minister. His result doesn’t even guarantee him a spot in the coalition government. Whichever combination of parties gets to the 76-seat majority first wins. VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz said tonight she didn’t see how it would be possible for Wilders to form a majority.
In any case, it took 299 days to form the last coalition government. Who knows how long this one will take.
More to come later…