Politics and Elections in the Netherlands: Rutte III era

[mvd10]

This is one of DENK's candidates in Utrecht. Notice anything strange?



I really wonder why he didn't just join GL. GL Amsterdam leader Groot Wassink is really left-wing so I'm sure GL Utrecht would have accepted someone as #woke as Jelle Bouwhuis lol.

[mvd10]

...the VVD, led by a young entrepreneur who is supposed to be a hottie (judge for yourselves)

Sort of hot for a politician, maybe, but still wouldn't hit it.


Is there any single site with election returns from across the country where we could follow? Or is it all fragmented?

https://maps.nrc.nl/tk2017dev/tk2017sb.php

This is a map of voting by precinct in 2017, and here is the NOS map for the 2017 general election if you want reference material. The NOS probably will have a liveblog or a livestream.

I assume the intelligence services law will win by a decent margin. There is a huge age divide (young voters oppose, older voters support) but younger voters often don't turn out and even then a sizable amount of young voters supports it or don't care.

I think it'd be interesting to see how well GL does in Amsterdam. Groot Wassink (GL leader) is really left-wing and he tried hard to make this election about housing. Not that it matters since both D66 (the more liberal/right-wing party on housing) and GL (vocally left-wing) likely will be in the next coalition.

[mvd10]

Given that Rotterdam will be the first exit poll, here are the 2014 Rotterdam results in percentages, compared to national result:

Leefbaar 27.5% (local party)
PvdA 15.8% (10.3%)
D66 12.7% (12.1%)
SP 10.5% (6.6%)
VVD 7.5% (12.2%)
CDA 5.9% (14.4%)
GL 4.9% (5.4%)
NIDA 4.8% (local party)
CU-SGP 3.2% (6.0%)
PvdD 2.5% (0.5%)

Bear in mind that the national numbers may be misleading since some parties participate in nearly all municipalities while other parties skip a bunch of municipalities.

[mvd10]

Josse de Voogd on right now. He says we should look closely at the result in Weert as it's the most "average" municipality in the first hour. I don't know about possible local parties in Weert, but since it's Josse de Voogd he's probably right (and Weert is a pretty average Dutch municipality as far as I know).

[mvd10]

Meh, I have spoken to a lot of people on university and even they are pretty divided. I know this is an useless anecdote, but these are the kind of people that should turn out en masse against the law. If it is defeated it might be by a weirdo coalition of young GL/D66 voters concerned with privacy and anti-establishment RWP's who don't have faith in the system. I would love to see the referendum map.

[mvd10]

pls dont fail exit poll

[mvd10]

Big SP loss, damn

[mvd10]

11 seats for Leefbaar, I think they're pretty happy with this since a lot of people thought they were doomed after the PVV decided to participate (PVV only won 2 seats lol)

[mvd10]

[mvd10]

David was right lol

[mvd10]

Referendum maps will be beautiful (normal Atlas poster)

Yeah, I wonder who exactly opposed. The young voters who are concerned with privacy and the kind of people who vote against this because they lost faith in the system aren't usually on the same side, it would be an interesting map. I'm happy with this result, I also oppose the law but I recognize a new intelligence service law is necessary because of recent changes regarding communication technology.

[mvd10]

The map will be interesting

My expectation student and big cities together with PVV/SP strongholds will vote against. Rural and suburbs will vote for

Yeah, the strongest supporters of this law seem to be VVD/CDA/CU/SGP voters which would translate to wealthier suburbs and rural areas voting for this with the rest opposing it.

[mvd10]

Also a very promising result for GL Amsterdam. Another huge SP loss.

[mvd10]

2014 (and 2010) results in Weert.

Where would the SP voters likely go? I believe they are normally the most working class party of the less, so is it the PVV entrance, that also hurts them? And who is hurt most by the emergence of DENK and the other parties for non-western immigrants. I'm guessing PvdA primarily?

PvdA is most hurt by this, they traditionally won large majorities with non-western immigrants. I'm not sure where SP voters go to be honest.

Local parties won big in Weert (Weert Lokaal went from 27% to 35%), small losses for CDA and VVD, bigger losses for SP and PvdA.

[mvd10]

GL wins Amsterdam (22%). Loss for D66 (from 26.6% to 17%). DENK at 5.7%, FvD at 4.9% and BIJ1 (Sylvana Simons) will enter the municipal council with 1 seat.

[mvd10]

Jesse Klaver on television. I probably have to stay neutral, but I still want to vomit.

[mvd10]

Polling station where I'm counting massively against (65% or so). Lower middle-class The Hague, PVV-VVD-DENK in GE17. Ethnically mixed area. You heard it here first!

Interesting. I wonder how university precincts vote. There seems to be a red dot building up in the north of the country (which makes sense).

[mvd10]

lol GL is defintely not connecting high educated voters with lower educated voters

If they could manage to do that they could basically replicate the PvdA 2012 coalition. But I think it's more likely that the PvdA gets it's act together (or that people just forget Rutte 2).

[mvd10]

For it just seems a classic right-left map to be honest. Big cities, the north en south east of Limburg voting against which are or used to be left strongholds

I was perhaps thinking too much in terms of class, but yes, come to think about it, you are absolutely right. Spicy take: this is what a Labour vs. Conservative map in the Netherlands could look like. I would not consider high-end suburbs like Haren or Zeist, where "against" won, to be left-wing in any meaningful sense of the word (though Heiloo and Oegstgeest, which are really similar, did vote in favor), though.

Isn't Haren quite left-wing? Normally these wealthy but progressive-leaning places have an overperforming VVD which compensates for the other right-wing parties underperforming, but the VVD only performs slightly better than nationwide in Haren. I believe it's literally the only municipality out of the 20/30 wealthiest municipalities to vote PvdA in 2012. Then again, I imagine leftists in Haren aren't very workerist .

The map indeed seems to be a combination of young people in university cities and people who lost confidence in the system (and used to vote PvdA in the past) which gives you an old PvdA victory map.

As for a Dutch Labour-Tory map: I imagine 2012 VVD vs PvdA would be 2015, as VVD-PvdA probably is a very class-based classical left-right battle. This referendum could be 2017, when Labour won wealthier places because either Brexit or supercharged turnout from less fortunate people. And young people probably voted hard against the referendum while they voted for Labour in the UK. GOP-Dem would just be right-wing parties vs left-wing parties (that would count PVV, CU and FvD as part of the right and D66 as part of the left). Some wealthier suburbs that voted VVD would be closer or even swing to the left because other right-wing parties barely win votes (Dutch Connecticut ) while parts of Groningen (or Limburg) where the VVD isn't popular but CDA and PVV are would go for the right.

CDA probably still is the biggest national party, but the VVD did win some votes. It's disappointing that we didn't manage to win the local elections for the first time ever, but it's not a terrible result.

[mvd10]

For it just seems a classic right-left map to be honest. Big cities, the north en south east of Limburg voting against which are or used to be left strongholds

I was perhaps thinking too much in terms of class, but yes, come to think about it, you are absolutely right. Spicy take: this is what a Labour vs. Conservative map in the Netherlands could look like. I would not consider high-end suburbs like Haren or Zeist, where "against" won, to be left-wing in any meaningful sense of the word (though Heiloo and Oegstgeest, which are really similar, did vote in favor), though.

Isn't Haren quite left-wing? Normally these wealthy but progressive-leaning places have an overperforming VVD which compensates for the other right-wing parties underperforming, but the VVD only performs slightly better than nationwide in Haren. I believe it's literally the only municipality out of the 20/30 wealthiest municipalities to vote PvdA in 2012. Then again, I imagine leftists in Haren aren't very workerist .

The map indeed seems to be a combination of young people in university cities and people who lost confidence in the system (and used to vote PvdA in the past) which gives you an old PvdA victory map.

As for a Dutch Labour-Tory map: I imagine 2012 VVD vs PvdA would be 2015, as VVD-PvdA probably is a very class-based classical left-right battle. This referendum could be 2017, when Labour won wealthier places because either Brexit or supercharged turnout from less fortunate people. And young people probably voted hard against the referendum while they voted for Labour in the UK. GOP-Dem would just be right-wing parties vs left-wing parties (that would count PVV, CU and FvD as part of the right and D66 as part of the left). Some wealthier suburbs that voted VVD would be closer or even swing to the left because other right-wing parties barely win votes (Dutch Connecticut ) while parts of Groningen (or Limburg) where the VVD isn't popular but CDA and PVV are would go for the right.

CDA probably still is the biggest national party, but the VVD did win some votes. It's disappointing that we didn't manage to win the local elections for the first time ever, but it's not a terrible result.

Wouldn't beat yourself up about it. In the same way this election's issues suited GL, it didn't suit Rutte's style nor the VVD's program. I imagine turnout has an impact too. GL benefited from the "national" local debates being about housing in big cities for yuppies civil servants and students, pollution, and Lelystad airport, not to mention the Groningen gas fields and the Belgian nuclear plants being somewhat strong grassroots issues on either side of the country. I don't think GL have really evolved nationally from where they were a year ago, although now that the media are painting Klaver as the winner and the main progressive opposition other voters might follow.

VVD might be worried about the CDA picking off certain parts of their vote now, but the national issues and Rutte's personal popularity is enough for me to think they will perform in provincials too.

I think everybody kind of expected what was going to happen to D66 in the inner cities.

The results are somewhat misleading. CDA participated in more municipalities than the VVD. And I presume people who voted for local parties vote slightly different from the general public. Local parties are very weak in Amsterdam and Utrecht (2 GL strongholds). Local parties are strongest in the south because the KVP (which completely dominated the Catholic vote before depillarisation) used to let local politicians decide on local issues, and southern voters may not like the Hague-centric national parties. Social cohesion through things like Carnaval still exists in the south, so they are much more likely to vote for someone they know personally from for example the carnaval association.

In national elections without local parties and where all parties participate in all municipalities the VVD definitely would have won, otherwise the polls would be off by a lot.

GL profited from the big issues in Amsterdam, but they also managed to make the climate a big issue in the campaign which really helped them. Indeed they were less hurt by local parties participating, but outperforming their general election results in municipal elections still is a great result for them. I think it'd be interesting to look where exactly they won votes. Did they just double down on the kind of people who were already (close to) supporting GL or did Klaver manage to broaden their base to less cosmopolitan voters (which he wanted)?

And D66 always was going to lose. I believe they were leading the national polls by quite a lot 4 years ago, so they were going to lose anyway.

[mvd10]

Lol Rutte. I also am a proud member of the 26% of VVD voters who oppose the intelligence services act .

[mvd10]

https://www.noties.nl/v/get.php?r=pp181203&f=Uitslagen+van+GR2018+naar+achtergrondkenmerken.pdf

Peil.nl results by some demographics: gender, age, education, smoking behaviour, income, religion, church visits, newspaper readership, website readership, watched television programmes, website readership, social media and more.

I always have doubts with Peil.nl's demographic data, but the results seem to make sense. Then again, in 2017 Peil.nl's crosstabs in their exit polls were much different from Ipsos', and I'm inclined to believe Ipsos' numbers (but Ipsos only gave results by age and education on the NOS).

[mvd10]

smoking behaviour

Is this an actual thing Dutch pollsters ask about in connection to politics?

It's one of De Hond's pet peeves to ask questions about irrelevant things (just like he asks you about owning actual pets). You're likely to find some correlation, but it will always be explained by class, age, education, income or ethnicity, so it is completely useless information. Meanwhile they'll never ask you about class, because that concept isn't supposed to exist in the Netherlands...

How would it be measured? Like the British ABC1/C2DE system? There are polls by income (though de Hond never mentions what he defines as "high" or "middle+"), but income may not fully capture things like cultural capital, so results by class could be interesting (for example a moderately successful 50-year old shop owner in Druten vs a 25-year old latte liberal IT consultant in Amsterdam who may have similar incomes but live in 2 totally different worlds).

[mvd10]

Great post, David!

The figures are perhaps too low to be significant, but I thought the SGP voters were having lots of children, so their young voter share would be a bit higher, but that seems not to be the case.

Thank you. I expected this too. However, the N is probably really low, so I'm not sure if I'm ready to draw any conclusions, but at least these findings do call into question this idea.

I think I have an ok perception of most parties and their core voters, but I'm a bit doubtful on CU. How would you draw up a stereotype of a typical CU voter. Of course fairly religious, but what in terms of education, sector of work, (dis)satisfied with politics etc.? From the graph, it seems their average voter is slightly younger than average.

Have to be honest here: I have to rely on what we know in political science, because I know only a handful unrepresentative CU voters; most "bubbles" or spheres in Dutch society I understand, but this one is difficult for me to "get" as well.

I would think of an average CU voter as a fourty-something married woman in the East of the country who works in education or healthcare, has an average education background, is relatively religious (maybe slightly to the right of the mainline option within the Protestant Church of the Netherlands), cares about the environment, is worried about certain changes (growing intolerance on all sides of the political spectrum, climate change, EU integration, losing our Dutch norms and values, increasing number of lonely elderly people) but at the same time feels blessed living in a wealthy country, is not dissatisfied with politics and does not worry too much about making ends meet. People close to her may vote CU, but also CDA or VVD.

CU also does well within certain black evangelical communities ("Hallelujah churches") in Amsterdam Southeast; I imagine that the gender gap would be even bigger there than among white Dutch people. The CU councilman who was just elected in Amsterdam is black.

I always though SGP was the party of the former Gereformeerde Kerken while CU was the party of the former Hervormde Kerk, but apparently there isn't much of a difference (did some quick background research). Still, CU vote is geographically clustered (not as extreme as the SGP) so I imagine there isn't a lot of CU/other party crossover. Interestingly enough there are some places in the Northern parts of the country where CU does really well but SGP scores only 2% or so. Maybe it does have to do with (former) church denomination after all? I think a large chunk of CU voters were born in GPV/RPF voting families (just like SGP voters) instead of being swing voters (they did manage to win a couple of seats in 2006 though). CU/SGP voters (especially SGP voters) may be the last pillar remaining. Until DENK came along and won 75% of voters with a Turkish background in Amsterdam .

[mvd10]

Weird question: what are the different parties' positions on prostitution laws? Especially with the increased interest in the Nordic model in some quarters?

CU and SGP obviously want to ban it. Especially the CU is outspoken on this, I guess banning prostitution (which in a lot of cases is forced) uniquely unites CU's social conservatism with their hipster SJW-ish tinge. They want to go to the Nordic system: the customer is punishable, the prostitute not.

SP is surprisingly conservative on issues like prostitution (and euthanasia). Maybe they see prostitution (and euthanasia) as things people are "forced" to do because of the neoliberal system. Or maybe they do it because they're very strong in parts of Brabant and Limburg where the KVP (Catholic party) used to reign supreme.

VVD and D66 seem to be the most libertarian parties on this issue. They only want the customer to be punishable if he (or she lol) could know for sure that the prostitute is forced to do this.

CDA wants more limits and they want to make it easier to punish customers who could have known that the prostitute was forced, but they don't want an outright ban as far as I know. Lately a prominent CDA MP called prostitution a "legalized #MeToo", so perhaps this stance changes in the future.

PvdA actually is quite conservative on this, I don't think they want an outright ban but they're atleast interested in the Nordic model. I imagine for the same reasons as the SP (prostitution as a "natural" negative consequence of capitalism, not as something you'd do out of your free will).

Other than some tweet about stopping loverboys I couldn't find a lot about the PVV's position on this. They support raising the age limit but I guess the Nordic model goes too far for them.

Groenlinks supported a law that would make it easier to criminalize customers who possibly could have known the prostitute was forced to do it, but I don't think they would go as far as the Nordic model. Then again, with the increased SJW presence I wouldn't be surprised.

There seem to be 2 main camps that oppose: Christians that oppose it because it doesn't rhyme with their morals and lefties who see it as a consequence of capitalism instead of a free choice (just like some people see euthanasia as the epitome of neoliberalism). In that case it makes sense that the VVD and D66 are most libertarian on this. They're secular, socially liberal parties (especially D66) and they're probably also not very likely to see prostitution as a consequence of capitalism instead of a free choice because they're generally the most libertarian parties on economic issues (especially VVD).

I wonder what people who want to ban prostitution think of male prostitutes for females (gigolos). It's a marginal sector but surely it's more than just an urban legend. It doesn't look like there is a lot of abuse/forced prostitution in this sector (probably a case of supply and demand, I don't think there is a lack of straight males who would like to bang Miss Sloane for some money ) but if you're going to ban female or gay prostitution you obviously have to be consequent.

Often prostitution and how to handle red-light districts are local issues, and I believe local parties have some sort of autonomy on these issues.