Dutch Vote in Parliamentary Elections
By Marthe van der Wolf March 15, 2017
The Dutch cast ballots Wednesday in an election closely followed in the rest of Europe.
Far-right leader Geert Wilders led the polls for months, but lost his momentum and was polling in second place, behind the center-right liberals led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The liberals and their coalition partners, however, were expected to lose many parliament seats.
With France and Germany holding elections in the coming months, the outcome of the Dutch vote is seen as an indicator as to whether western European countries are shifting to the right and supporting anti-establishment parties.
Emilie van Outeren is a political reporter for the Dutch daily NRC.
"The Dutch elections are framed as one in a series of elections, after Brexit and [U.S. President Donald] Trump and before those in France and Germany, between political establishment and xenophobe populism. Only since Wilders started dropping in the polls has there been some attention for the fact that our coalition system and the excluding by other parties will disable Wilders to govern," she said.
When it comes to media attention, Wilders wins. Despite his few public appearances, a quarter of the election news has been about the far-right leader and his anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and anti-European Union messages. All parties except for one have ruled out cooperation with Wilders' Freedom Party.
The big winner of the election is most likely to be Jesse Klaver, nicknamed "Jessiah" for his rising popularity. The 30-year-old leader of the Green Left party has been compared to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and copied campaign strategies from former U.S. President Barack Obama. The expected win of about 17 seats in the 150-seat parliament would8 be the biggest ever for Green Left.
The Christian Democrats, along with a social-liberal party known as D66, the Green Left, and the Socialist Party are all expected to finish within a few percentage points of each other. The variety of parties probably means coalition talks will take a long time.
The Social Democrats will likely be the biggest losers, set to lose a third or more of their seats. Aad de Haan, a flower shop owner in Rotterdam, the second -largest city in the Netherlands, doesn't want to disclose who he voted for but said he doesn't see the Social Democrats playing a big role in the coming coalition negotiations.
"I think the center-right Liberals and the Freedom Party will be the big winners, with the Christian Democrats coming in third place. It will be difficult to form a coalition because the two parties have said they don't want to work together," he said.
Andre Krouwel is a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam and director of Election Compass, an online tool helping people to decide which party to vote for. More than 25 parties are contending in the 2017 elections, with several one-issue parties such as a party for animal rights, a party for non-voters and a party focused on the rights of seniors.
Krouwel said the recent decline in support for Wilders has a lot to do with voters waiting for the last moment to make a final decision.
"If you ask voters a month before the elections, you will only get opinions of very convinced voters; but, 40 percent were still unsure a week before the elections; yesterday it was 20 percent and 10 percent will only decide today who they will vote for. More extremist parties usually poll high at the start of the election campaign because the moderate voters are only included now," he said.
Exit polls were expected late Wednesday and final results early Thursday following voting done by pencil and paper, and ballots counted by hand. This is due to the fact that computers could be tampered with and a fear after the U.S. elections last November of Russians possibly trying to influence the Netherlands' vote.
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