Politics and Elections in the Netherlands: coalition agreement presented

[freek]

First column: percentage of the votes in the 2012 elections
Second column: percentage of the votes according to this poll
Third column: maximum voter potential according to this poll (the sum obviously exceeds 100%)
Fourth column: losses/gains in voter intention compared with 2012 results
Fifth column: losses/gains in voter potential compared with 2012 results (which obviously shows net gains overall because the sum of "voter potential" can be higher than 100%)
(source: peil.nl/Maurice de Hond)

It would be interesting to see if similar charts exists from some time before the 2012 elections, and if parties exceeded their potential in the elections. My gut feeling is that the potential for PvdA might have been below 25% in such a poll in 2011 or early 2012.

And unrelated: what VNL is has been explained above, and PP is the Pirate Party.

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The CDA is the only party with a plurality of 2012 voters being against sanctions. I have no idea why, because the party's stance on the issue hasn't been really remarkable. Perhaps some old Christians think Putin is cool?

Sanctions harm Dutch farmers?

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(Rectification on an SGP-related issue: earlier in this thread, I rebutted someone who said that most SGP voters don't want to vaccinate their children, whereas I said this was an exaggeration - I thought it was only a minority. To be sure about that, I asked a friend of mine who knows a lot about this "world", and he said that a vast majority of people in the Reformed "sub-pillar" still don't vaccinate their children. So the other poster was right and I stand corrected.)

It strongly depends on the denomination:



(Table is from the PhD thesis Acceptance of Vaccination among Orthodox Protestants in The Netherlands)

Apart from 2 smaller denominations: Reformed Congregations in the Netherlands / Gereformeerde Gemeenten in Nederland and Old Reformed Congregations / Oud Gereformeerde Gemeenten in Nederland (of which Van der Staaij is a member), a majority of members of each denomination allow their children to be vaccinated. In total, there is also a majority of about 60%.

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Lol: not enough money for a reasonable number of polling stations, but the government did actually find money to allocate 47,973 euros to producing toilet paper (!) with arguments for and against the agreement on it, and to distributing this. Literally flushing your tax money down the toilet. What a joke country we are.

(To be fair, this decision was made by the referendum commission, which has 2,000,000 euros to distribute... while the polling station fiasco is the national government's fault... but still it is ridiculous that there are not enough polling stations, which would be too costly, while money is allocated to producing toilet paper.)

A few exceptions aside, it is completely sensible to lower the amount of polling stations. At the province elections of last year, there were on average 650 votes/station, in 13.5 hours.  And that is with a turnout of about 50%. Double that amount is doable, especially since the ballot is not the typical 1x1 metre size this time.

Even though I think the referendum is a ludicrous waste of money, I am volunteering again (but abstaining to vote).

[freek]

A few exceptions aside, it is completely sensible to lower the amount of polling stations. At the province elections of last year, there were on average 650 votes/station, in 13.5 hours.  And that is with a turnout of about 50%. Double that amount is doable, especially since the ballot is not the typical 1x1 metre size this time.

Even though I think the referendum is a ludicrous waste of money, I am volunteering again (but abstaining to vote).

Sure, it is sensible to lower the number of polling stations by somewhat. I'm not saying it should be the same as in Tweede Kamer elections, but I am saying the number should be reasonable. This is also not solely about "voters per polling station", it is about access to polling stations. It is ridiculous for the government to make this a discussion about money. We are a rich country and democracy is worth something. Political scientists like Joop van Holsteyn have criticized the government for deliberately lowering the number of polling stations too much for a reason.

I will probably be volunteering again too, since the municipality where I usually do this has apparently decided to keep the number of polling stations the same (even though I haven't received a message from them yet). I will definitely be voting, but am not sure yet whether to vote for or against. Am in favor of the agreement but against the EU, which is a bit awkward.

On average it is lowered by 8%. Not that much. I am slightly worried about Oldenzaal and Rhenen, who plan to have 5000 registered voters per station. A 30% turnout is manageable, if it will be 50% there might be some problems.

I don't think access to a polling station is a problem. Maybe this is because I grew up in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, but our country is so densely populated that no one lives unreasonably far from a polling station.
I already have confirmation that I am volunteering again, with the same people in the same primary school. I could have been chairman in a different district if I wanted but I have refused.

[freek]

Just for fun: election results by polling station (on a map) for Provincial/Senatorial elections 2015: click. NRC had this for the 2012 and 2010 Tweede Kamer elections too, but if I click on the polling stations I don't get a result anymore, so I did not include them here.

In case someone is interested: I have the full results per polling station for the 2015 province (and water board) elections, in xlsx format. Unfortunately without geographic coordinates though.

Please let me know if I should upload it to my website.

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Hurrah! I have finished my e-learning course for volunteering in the polling station. Apparently it is illegal to leave a D66-balloon tied to the table that we use for handing out the ballot papers to the voters. Also, we should check that we have  received the correct ballot papers some time before opening at 0730, not afterwards.

[freek]

All this may lead to more than 100,000 votes essentially being thrown away if all three parties end up under the 0,67% threshold, though it remains to be seen whether FvD and GP will actually get on the ballot.

Why wouldn't they get on the ballot? It is not that difficult, if you have some kind of a party organization.

[freek]

All this may lead to more than 100,000 votes essentially being thrown away if all three parties end up under the 0,67% threshold, though it remains to be seen whether FvD and GP will actually get on the ballot.

Why wouldn't they get on the ballot? It is not that difficult, if you have some kind of a party organization.

Its still a costly exercise and I think its fair to say that the Dutch Right is hard electoral market to enter right now.

New peil.nl poll has PVV +1 to 34, PvdD +1 to 5, VVD -1 to 24 and D66 -1 to 14. The SP is now at 11 seats, -4 compared to TK12 and the only opposition party losing seats, truly a piss poor performance given the PvdA's unpopularity.

What is GL's score in light of PVDA's unpopularity?

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What is exactly the CDA?

I'm tempted to say a standard Christian Democratic party in western Europe, but I think DavidB will tell you that they are an alliance of different confessional parties with a rich history in Dutch politics. I think right now though they are just popular in the South, especially rural Limburg, which like Flanders has this small town catholic culture that allows for clientalism. Their Flemish equivalent still has the largest trade union and mutualité (they have a pillar, a state within a state - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilarisation) but politically are becoming less and less relevant as a lot of people no longer vote for parties out of loyalty. I imagine the same has happened to the CDA.

Secularisation is also not really helping for CDA.

Apart from that, it is very much a rural party, not just a party for the South or a Catholic party.
Areas with the highest CDA support are all rural. They either voted KVP in the past (i.e. were Catholic) or CHU (Dutch Reformed protestants, not very orthodox. Typically upper/middle class and/or from a rural area). The areas that most strongly supported CHU in the past are found in Friesland, Overijssel (west), Gelderland (east).

I guess most voters that would have voted ARP in the past have switched to either ChristenUnie or SGP (since these parties were formed by 3 waves of disillusioned ARP voters).

[freek]

Participating parties (by list number)

1 VVD
2 PvdA
3 PVV
4 SP
5 CDA
6 D66
7 ChristenUnie
8 GroenLinks
9 SGP
10 PvdD
11 50PLUS

new parties:



Numbers above the columns are electoral districts ('kieskring'). x means a party is participating in this district. Parties 1 - 11 participate in every district by default.
Most provinces are coterminous with 1 district. Provinces of Gelderland, Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland are subdivided. Amsterdam = 9, The Hague = 12, Rotterdam = 13. The Caribbean islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius are district 20.

Map:

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The image for the other parties doesn't seem to be working, but I posted them on the previous page:

Changed the image host to my own website. I hope this fixed it.

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Wait does the former Netherlands Antilles vote in the general? Who do they go for?

Only the three smallest islands. The other three (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten) each are autonomous islands with their own parliament and government.

In practice, turnout is very low (<25% in 2012, the first time the islands participated).

Result in 2012:

PvdA  632   24,00 %
VVD   480   18,23 %
D66   441   16,75 %
CDA  428   16,26 %
SP     198     7,52 %
ChrU  117    4,44 %
PVV    75     2,85 %
GrL     68     2,58 %
PvdD  64      2,43 %
50+   53     2,01 %
SGP   11     0,42 %
Other 66     2,50 %

Invalid 14,15%

[freek]

Apparently, Wilders has cancelled all of his planned public appearances.

A member of his personal security team (of Moroccan origin, lol) apparently tried to kill him or something.

Not really. He is accused of corruption. Moroccan gangsters were apparently in possession of confidential police information that was accessed by this police man. It is not clear what kind of information, but probably related to this gang, not to Wilders.

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(can someone post the image?)

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This is a nice article: 10 images that show for every party the geographical distribution of votes since 1946, based on current municipalities:

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/02/28/het-veranderende-politieke-landschap-in-tien-gifjes-a1547907

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And this is what the map would look like on the basis of current polling.

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New peil.nl poll

 

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http://www.1limburg.nl/den-haag-doet-te-weinig-voor-limburg?context=topstory

http://atlanticsentinel.com/2017/02/nativist-freedom-party-draws-support-from-dutch-periphery/

Interesting article about how the centre-periphery debate rages on in the Netherlands, despite it being a small, unitary country. Limburg in particular was known for representing the fairly simple political divide between rural CDA catholics, and urban industrial PvdA. Brabant and Groningen were in similar situations, but with the added factor of their own communist parties (I forget whether it was the CPN that always used to get insane results in parts of the North even when SP started to monopolise the far left).

It was the NCPN (i.e. New CPN). At the time that SP started to become more than a local group from North Brabant, CPN already merged into GroenLinks.

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By far the most successful region in electing regional candidates outside list order is Twente (Eastern part of Overijssel province). 2012: Pieter Omtzigt, 2010: Sabine Uitslag, 1998: Annie Schreijer. All three were CDA MPs.

[freek]

Baudet tonight stated that "our elite is homeopathically mixing us with all other peoples so that there will never be a Dutchman anymore", which has sparked some Twitter outrage.

Which is a rather interesting thing to say for someone named Thierry Baudet, so I guess I am missing some context.

[freek]

Baudet tonight stated that "our elite is homeopathically mixing us with all other peoples so that there will never be a Dutchman anymore", which has sparked some Twitter outrage.

Which is a rather interesting thing to say for someone named Thierry Baudet, so I guess I am missing some context.

Is Baudet of Belgian elite origin ?

If a maths teacher from Braine-le-Comte / 's-Gravenbrakel in Hainaut, on the run for Napoleonic conscription, is elite then yes.

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LISS poll:



(daily poll, poll result is the average of the last 7 days).

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how realistic is a "wilders-less" center-right government atm?

i don't know which of the smaller parties, which are going to gain a few seats, would join a liberal/christ-democrat government either than a center-left/left-ish one.

My guess is 90+% for a VVD/CDA/D66/?? coalition. ?? could be GL or CU or PvdA. Chances of PVV in the coalition is 0.

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A new coalition will almost certaintly consist of VVD+CDA+D66 plus a combination of PvdA, GL or/and CU. In addition SGP can always give outside support if necessary

Yes, SGP in government would be unacceptable for D66 and VVD.

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The SGP didn't include repealing gay marriage and reinstating the death penalty in their platform, which was seen as a sign that they would like to have a more prominent role (most likely giving outside support to a minority coalition). And the SGP also worked with a VVD-PvdA coalition on some issues so I think they could agree to give outside support to a VVD-CDA-D66-CU coalition as long as progressive legislation on abortion and euthanasia will be blocked (if the CDA and CU haven't already demanded that).

Yes. Also on their list of demands will be some kind of income tax reform (the current system disadvantages families with a single income), and something that would help farmers and fishermen. Subsidies, or less bureaucracy