Dutch general election - September 2012

[nimh]

Hi - new here to this forum.

I made an overview of the latest polls about the Dutch elections (all from yesterday), calculating their average; showing how that average has changed, week by week, over the last month; and adding two charts to visualize this. It has no text/explanation, but a week or two earlier I made one that had some background information as well.

I was hoping it's of interest, but I see now that I can't post links or images here yet, because I'm new. Uh-oh. How do I share them with you then?

[nimh]

Not, I suppose. Ah well ... they will be overtaken by the real election results in a bit anyway. But it could have been fun to look at the progression of polls over time, and the charts were cool. Maybe later, when I have clocked enough posts.

[nimh]

Re: Tender Branson, no, not the batteries... it's a long story :-)

Good idea about the URLs by the way, let me try this:

The latest polls, with comparisons to previous ones and charts:

i dot imgur dot com / HvG46 dot png

The polls from a week ago, with more background info:

i dot imgur dot com / nTIGX dot gif

[nimh]

I tried something else too, this time. On the website of the Kiesraad, you can download a .csv file with the results from the 2010 elections by municipality. Using those results, and the average of yesterday's final polls, I've calculated benchmarks for the party results by municipality, so I can check as individual municipalities come in whether the parties are doing better or worse then the polls suggested.

Eh, that might more be electoral masturbation than actually useful, considering that the exit poll-based prognoses at 9 will already give a good indication of how the result will compare to the last polls. But it will hopefully maybe also be interesting in terms of quickly seeing what regions parties do better or worse in, in terms of gains/losses vs 2010.

[nimh]

Hey thanks, Leftbehind and Tender Branson! Hopefully of a little interest.

[nimh]

Wow. Holy crap.

Those results are stunning. The SP and PVV just collapsed. And the VVD and PvdA at 40 seats! Jesus. This is a shock.

When's the last time the final polls were so far off from what we can presume, for now, to roughly be the actual result? I know that last time round the pollsters were off on the PVV score, but something like this - a huge last-day shift of votes, or the pollsters just being off this badly - hasn't happened since ... 2002, I'm guessing, but those were very special circumstances, with Fortuyn's murder on the eve of the elections.

Damn. Count me unhappy with this result.

[nimh]

Well my benchmarks have instantly turned useless, considering they're going to be way off for four of the main parties across the board.

Forgetting about the polls for a moment, don't forget the historical perspective:

* Best result for the VVD in its entire history
* Worst result for the CDA in its entire history (incl the sum totals of its predecessor parties)
* Worst result for the Green Left since it was founded.

[nimh]

Agreed with you on all counts, Insula

[nimh]

On the bright side, if the prognosis is correct, this is arguably also the best result for the broader left in Dutch electoral history ... that is to say, if you count both D66 and the party for the elderly, 50 Plus. You can justify the former, since D66 is traditionally considered on the center-left, though less so now than ever, not sure about the latter, though 50 Plus is Jan Nagel's brainchild.

PvdA + SP + D66 + GL + 50 Plus + PvdD = 76 seats.

The previous best result for the broader left was 1998, when PvdA + SP + D66 + GL got 75 seats.

This is of course of limited practical use, since D66 and the SP don't have much in common, but sociologically/historically interesting.

[nimh]

PvdA can't craft a left coalition. The only option is a Pvda/VVD coalition.

Hypothetically, you could craft a center-left coalition of PvdA + SP + CDA + D66 -- maybe the CDA, which previously said it wouldn't govern with both PvdA *and* SP, would be a little less wary now the SP has gotten so small -- but yeah, I don't see it happening. Something would have to horribly blow up in negotiations for Purple III for that to happen.

[nimh]

Yeah, it would definitely be a long shot. Just slightly more likely than VVD + PVV + CDA + D66, which is not saying much since that would be unimaginable. Purple III, in some form or other, it will be.

[nimh]

As we speak. Wev'e already had Schiermonniksoog, Vlieland, and Rozendaal. The habitual early reporters.

The results in Schiermonnikoog were apparently somewhat skewed because 60 SGP youths travelled to Schiermonnikoog to vote there, taking up the local SGP vote from 0.4% to some 6%.

[nimh]

Some striking variations from place to place here. On the island of Vlieland, where the VVD was the largest party, it actually lost votes. But in Renswoude, the party went from 22% to 37%.

Also in: the Dutch Reformed stronghold of Hardinxveld-Giessendam. The Christian Union and the SGP, together good for about 5% of the national vote, pool 38% of the vote in this agrarian community, up a tad from 2010.

[nimh]

CDA crushed in its traditional catholic stronghold in the south

So their third-party status is permanent then?

Who knows .. they were already relegated to third-party status once, in the 90s, before surging back under Balkenende. But they're in a lot worse state now, at less than half the seats they had then.

In particular, the CDA seems to be singularly unable to hold its old strongholds in the Catholic South. It's surviving better, relatively speaking I mean, in the protestant (but not fundamentalist) East and North. (Based on the 2010 results, when the party had already cratered, and a poll with data by region I saw this week).

[nimh]

you're center, so you're right-wing. Period.

Mm. I share your bitterness about all the floating voters rushing back from their SP preference to the Labour mothership because they happen to have a smart-sounding leader again ... but this makes no sense to me. If you're center, you're center. Right-wingers are right-wingers, centrists are centrists, left-wingers are left-wingers.

You can argue that the PvdA is more a centrist party than a left-wing party, but there's no automatic way in which everyone who is centrist magically therefore is, *really*, right-wing.

Only way I see that work is if you'd go with a kind of "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality, where everyone who is not actively on your side is ipse facto a guilty member of the opposite side, but that kind of logic (made famous by creepy leaders from Lenin to George W. Bush) strikes me as a bit disturbing.

[nimh]

Ai, in Oss, the oldest SP bulwark in local politics, the VVD comes out on top this time at 26%, with Labour placing second at 21% and the SP in third at 20%. The Socialists were the largest party here in the national elections of 2006, with 31% of the vote, as well as in 2010, when its 19% was enough to come out on top in an extremely fragmented field. So no loss in percentage point this time, but a symbolic drop from first to third place.

Oss is a provincial town in the southern province of Brabant with an industrial tradition, and has been well-known as SP bulwark, the same way Finsterwolde in the far northeast of the country used to be the ultimate Communist Party municipality and Rucphen in the southwest always has one of the best results for the far right. The SP entered the local council here in 1974, in its Maoist days, and has been the biggest party in the local council since 1998. Its local support seems to have been slipping a bit though: whereas it received 37-38% of the vote in the local elections of 1998 and 2002, it fell back to 29% in 2006 and 23% in 2010. That's local election results, and suggests the slide started before Jan Marijnissen, who is from Oss, stepped down as national SP leader.

In nearby Boxmeer, meanwhile, where the current SP leader Emiel Roemer is from, the SP scored 32% of the vote today, down a tad from last time (34%). It will surely be the party's best result tonight.

[nimh]

But it's the second time the SP had the occasion of overtaking the pale PvdA, and still nothing

Third time, even ... back in 2003, a little less than two months before the elections, the SP were at over 20 seats in the polls and just 5 seats behind the PvdA. In 2006, a week before the elections, the SP was close to 30 seats in the polls and just 2-3 seats behind the PvdA. And this year, of course, just a month ago the SP was at 35 seats and the PvdA at just 19. It's a serial problem by now.

Polling data from here (let's see if I'm allowed to post a link yet - no... okay I'll do it like this again): www dot allepeilingen dot com / index dot php / vergelijk-peiling-met-uitslag-2002-2003-2006-2010-en-2012-sp dot html

[nimh]

Also, SGP +2? Wtf.

Their all-time best isn't it? Only in this election.

It would be, yes. Incredibly enough, the SGP has had either 2 seats or 3 seats since ... wait for it ... 1925.

[nimh]

Also, SGP +2? Wtf.

Their all-time best isn't it? Only in this election.

It would be, yes. Incredibly enough, the SGP has had either 2 seats or 3 seats since ... wait for it ... 1925.

The fact that they'll apparently be back up to 3 now, though, does remind me of this post by Erik Voeten on the political science blog The Monkey Cage, in which he suggested that Van der Staaij's Akin-like remark about rape and pregnancy was a deliberate ploy to gain publicity and extra votes: themonkeycage dot org / blog / 2012 / 08 / 30 / the-diffusion-of-stupid-and-offensive-ideas

(I didn't agree at the time, but they certainly don't seem to have been hurt by his remarks..

[nimh]

Interesting data here (I'm not even gonna try posting another link) - the NOS Politiek 24 site, if you go to where the incoming results are and you click the Analysis tab, also gives you the possibility to get lists of where any party has done best so far, and where they won the most.

Take the VVD. Where did it do best? Where the rich people live, of course: Laren, 54%; Blaricum, 49%; Rozendaal, 48%; Bloemendaal, 46%; Naarden, 46%.

But where did it win the most? Mostly rural, agrarian municipalities. Renswoude, +15%; Bunschoten, +15%; Tubbergen, +15%; Midden-Delfland, +13%.

This is probably a reflection of the collapse of the CDA, and also distinctly bad news for that party. Rural/agrarian Netherlands, along with retired people, were the sole remaining sectors where the CDA was still doing well. If even the villagers, who generally tend to be more stable in their voting patterns, get used to seeing the VVD as their new default party, it will make the CDA's prospects for resurgence distinctly harder.

I.e. look at the CDA's biggest losses: Bunschoten, -17%; Tubbergen -14%; Boekel, -12%; Sint Oedenrode, -12%; Renswoude, -11%.

Tubbergen remains the CDA's best municipality so far, with an impressive 30% of the vote, but its second best place, Hellendoorn (23%) also shows up in the party's list of biggest losses (-10%).

In general, the CDA's list of 10 worst losses so far is marked by a fair number of municipalities in the East, which had been the one region where the party's vote had relatively held up best in 2010 even as its vote in the South collapsed: Tubbergen, Putten, Dalfsen, Hellendoorn.

[nimh]

Well, SGP always profits when turnout is low

According to the NOS, turnout is 75% so far, and that's exactly what turnout was in 2010, so that doesn't explain the difference.

[nimh]

Is the SP really anti-EU, or just anti-austerity?

They're Eurosceptic, but not anti-EU. They don't want to leave the Euro, like Wilders, though they were against its introduction. They don't want to leave the EU. But they're opposed to delegating any further authorities to Brussels. This sets them apart from the fairly Euro-friendly Labour Party and the passionately Euro-friendly Democrats and Green Left.

[nimh]

Oh, can someone explain me what happened to GroenLinks ?

... You took the question right out of my mouth, what happened with the GL? we already discussed CDA and PVV.

It's kind of a long story. I answered the same question a month ago on Daily Kos Elections, let me port my answer there over ... mind you, it's long-winded:

A fussin' and a fightin'

On an immediate, shallow level there's just nothing but strife coming out of the party. The election campaign is kicking off but all you hear from the Green Left is individual politicians sniping at each other.

Just last week, for example, two of the current MPs who are not running for reelection spoke out separately. Veteran MP Ineke van Gent revealed that the parliamentary group's coordination body hasn't met for a year and communication has basically broken down. Another retiring MP openly speculated on who the new party leader should be, considering Jolanda Sap's current weak performance.

Last month, there was an actual leadership contest, a vote among party members at large, triggered when a young MP told the media that the fighting spirit and sense of solidarity and companionship within the party had gone and he wanted to bring it back as new leader. The party board initially responded by trying to disallow a leadership vote and publishing internal assessments judging the young MP to be lacking in skills and depth. In terms of publicity, this backfired, especially when it was revealed that the party leadership had made all sitting MPs take IQ tests as part of the assessment of whether they should be on the candidate list again, and those who refused to take them were sidelined. In the end the ballot did take place and Sap easily won with an overwhelming margin, but the damage was done.

How the Green Left tried to follow in Joschka Fischer's footsteps

All of that is just superficial stuff though. The real problem with the Green Left is that it seems to have thoroughly lost its way politically and nobody really knows what they stand for anymore.

Maybe the best way to describe the longer term development (and current decline) of the party is by comparing it with the German Greens. I think it's fair to say that ever since Femke Halsema became party leader in 2002 or 2003 (having come from the Labour Party), or maybe even before under Paul Rosenmoller, the party has tried to emulate the way in which Joschka Fischer transformed the German Greens. It would be silly to presume some grand deliberate plan - in reality, the party also just kind of stumbled from one decision to the other, as all parties do - but as a way of describing the development, if there had been a plan, it would have looked like this:

In the first phase, starting in the late 90s already, the party leadership marginalized those pesky pacifists, socialists and other assorted radicals who made up the core of the Green Left's predecessor parties in the 1980s - the anti-nuke activists, the squatters, the old-time principled socialists. The "fundis", if you will, to use the German terminology. This gradually involved, over the next decade and a half, sidelining internal party democracy and implementing a more top-down approach, culminating in this year's shenanigans.

A follow-up phase involved embracing the Dutch participation in the war in Yugoslavia, and later on accepting its participation and renewed participation in the war in Afghanistan. The decision about Yugoslavia led to a walk-out of the radical pacifist activists, but did not harm the party electorally. The the so-called Kunduz decision, however, in which the party aligned itself with the then-right wing government to approve an extended Dutch participation in Afghanistan, was much more broadly controversial within the party.

Increasingly, starting with Rosenmoller and ever more so under Halsema and Sap, the Green Left focused on proving in every way it could that it was ready to govern: that it was responsible and respectable. Maybe if it had made it in, like the German Greens, it would have acquired a different image, but instead, it came off looking a little desperate at times: the unrequited suitor, ready to do anything to be invited by the big boys.

That said, by the early 2000s, the party had successfully transformed itself from a somewhat chaotic left-radical group into an electorally successful party of the postmaterialist, cultural left. Socio-economic issues were de-emphasized. You voted for the Green Left because you wanted to defend the multicultural society against the insurgent far-right, protect the environment, defend the arts against budget cuts, support European integration, etc. For a while, it changed the party from a coalition of students, intellectuals and unemployed people getting 4% of the vote into a more broadly middle class party of highly-educated liberals getting 8% of the vote.

As someone who had supported the party's decision on Yugoslavia (in fact, that's when I became a member), but who disliked the fact that members seemed to be more agitated by bicycle paths than affordable renting, I didn't like the end result, but it did work for a while.

This was also the time when Halsema floated the notion of the Green Left as a left-liberal or social-liberal party - which to many of the party faithful was outrageous, since it implied a center-left rather than radical-left outlook. Changes in economic policy platforms followed. The party embraced some traditionally right-wing ideas, like making it easier for employers to fire people, though they dressed it up in left-wing sounding rationales (eg, making more space on the labour market for unemployed young people). Soon, the Green Left was profiling itself as a party that embraced the need for innovative economic reforms. It posited itself as more forward looking and modern than the "old-fashioned" Labour Party - again, much like the German Greens did.

This spring, the right-wing government fell, after the Freedom Party withdrew its support. A date for new elections was set, but in the meantime the right-wing liberal VVD and the Christian-Democrats needed new allies to pass the annual budget. In just a day or two, a deal was hammered out with the center-left Democrats 66, the Christian Union ... and the Green Left. The Labour Party was left out of the negotiations, though later the Green Left (rather haughtily, I thought) argued that if Labour had wanted to join once the deal was drafted, it would have been free to.

The so-called Spring Agreement (also sometimes nicknamed "a Kunduz", since it was based on the same parties as those who had OK'd the renewed deployment of Dutch troops to Afghanistan) set out far-reaching economic reforms. They were based on the agreement of all parties that the Netherlands should at all costs meet the EU-set 3% deficit norm. This placed the signatories, including the Green Left, well to the right of - say - Paul Krugman - and to the right of Labour and the Socialists, of course.

The Green Left did not come away empty-handed: some pundits praised Sap's negotiation skills, which got a basically right-wing coalition to embrace a number of environmental policies and an immediate withdrawal of searing cuts to the arts and culture section that had been passed before. But the deal also involved far-reaching entitlements reforms and cuts in social services. Earlier, the Green Left had already agreed with a raise in the retirement age.

Out at sea, adrift in a leaky boat

Where has all this left the party? Ideologically, it now seems to be to the right of the Labour Party. It has proven itself a pragmatic, governance-oriented group of political professionals. But it lacks political coherence, an obvious electorate to appeal to, political allies, an engaged and enthusiastic membership, and ties to social movements outside parliament.

Voters at large are no longer really sure what the party stands for, and feel that even if it nominally stands for something, it'd be willing to ditch whatever it is at the drop of a hat if required for government participation. The party has alienated the other left-wing parties with what has been seen as a somewhat arrogant attitude, especially when contrasted with the party's seemingly endless desire to cozy up to the Democrats 66 and even the Christian-Democrats, and by what was considered a disloyal stance during the Spring Agreement negotiations. With a party leadership that's distrustful of its own members and even its own MPs, internal dynamism in the party is at a minimum. Many of the most committed activists have left in disappointment, and those who remain are more likely to approve the party's further moves to the center.

But there's the crux of the question, and what sets the Green Left apart from the German Greens: the Netherlands already has a center-left, pragmatic, social-liberal party for the highly educated upper middle class. It's called D66, and it's pulling three times as many votes as the Green Left. That's the problem in a nutshell, really. So what's the Green Left for, then?

If you think environmentalist activism is the most important thing, there's always the "Party for the Animals," which looks set to gain another seat. If you want to defend the accomplishments of the welfare state, you can't trust the Green Left and should vote Socialist or perhaps Labour instead. If you're an individualist with culturally liberal views, who believes it's important to stop the far right and spend more on education but doesn't care much about unemployment benefits, you vote D66.

So the Green Left is now a party looking for a reason to exist. Its shrinking electorate seems to have become primarily made up of mid-level civil servants, public service management types and the odd teacher or NGO boss, but they're not rooted in local communities, social movements, unions or other such constituencies the way the Socialist Party is. What is left is basically a bunch of well-meaning policy-making professionals without an electoral constituency, an engaged party organization, a clear ideology, or societal roots - and they don't even like each other! All they do is fight. Why would someone vote for them this year?

[nimh]

Yeah, the latest preliminary result has the VVD lead back from 1 to 2, about 100,000 votes...

[nimh]

Labour grandee Felix Rottenberg just told NOS News that a government coalition between PvdA, SP, CDA and D66 is "a really interesting alternative" with "a clear majority".

He warned that the PvdA and VVD are far apart on some crucial questions (eg health care) and he provocatively warned the victorious VVD for the fate which PvdA leader Joop den Uyl suffered: winning the election with an unparalelled score, going into coalition negotiations with too strident demands, and after six months of fighting negotiations, seeing the other main parties quickly make an agreement behind his back.

Is he just playing theatre, trying to soften up the VVD in advance of the negotiations? Is such an alternative coalition really feasible after all, if the VVD and PvdA really can't solve things? Or is Rottenberg just purely talking for himself, since he's more or less retired?