The anti-Islam, euroskeptic radical Geert Wilders is projected to be the shock winner of the Dutch election.
In a dramatic result that will stun European politics, his Freedom Party (PVV) is set to win around 35 of the 150 seats in parliament — more than double the number it secured in the 2021 election, according to exit polls.
Frans Timmermans’ Labour-Green alliance is forecast to take second place, winning 25 seats — a big jump from its current 17. Dilan Yeşilgöz, outgoing premier Mark Rutte’s successor as head of the center-right VVD, suffered heavy losses and is on course to take 24 seats, 10 fewer than before, according to the updated exit poll by Ipsos for national broadcaster NOS.
A win for Wilders will put the Netherlands on track — potentially — for a dramatic shift in direction, after Rutte’s four consecutive centrist governments. The question now, though, is whether any other parties are willing to join Wilders to form a coalition. Despite emerging as the largest party, he will lack an overall majority in parliament.
Geert Wilder wins Dutch election
35 of the 150 seats in parliament
Let’s please stop using FPTP language to describe very non-FPTP systems and outcomes.
Also the Dutch political system relies very heavily on coalitions and the “polder model” since no party can ever win a majority of seats in their House of Representatives.
Read the whole wiki, and all I can tell is it’s a label some politician came up with for simply compromising on a common goal to push it through when multiple parties overlap at least partially in agreement of that goal. Nothing beyond that, doesn’t say how, give guidelines or a framework. I guess it’s just a label for being ok with no majority party.
Agreed “win” is too simplistic. Still good shot at forming government though. I’m not familiar with the Dutch system, but, even in systems with proportional representation, the plurality winner usually gets first shot at forming government, and by convention usually does form government. They need 76 seats to govern and are more than halfway there with 37.
I don’t know how the Dutch system works, but some time ago a pro-Russian party won like 30-40% of seats in Latvia, but every other party joined together against them. And they couldn’t do shit even though they had the biggest number of seats. If it’s not 50%+1 - it doesn’t matter.
I believe no party has ever held an absolute majority in the Netherlands. And there has only ever been one time in the Netherlands when the biggest party did not govern.
Personally, I see two options: the most likely is Geert Wilders will become our prime minister, or (less likely) there will be new elections.
We have had to stand months of the Spanish opposition leader saying he “has won the election” because he leads the most voted party, even though it was impossible for him to form a coalition that would give him the government (the other right wing parties are either centralist, decentralist or independentist, and will veto each other). Even some international media bought this narrative and eagerly presented the idea that there was going to be a change of government.
What does FPTP mean?
First past the post - the party with the most votes ‘wins’. It’s in contrast to a range of other systems that rely on proportionality or preferential voting to ensure that the party or parties with majority support wins.
For example, imagine a scenario where there are 10 constituencies electing a representative by FPTP. In each of those 10 constituencies, the result is identical as follows:
- Nazi - 40%
- Liberal - 30%
- Socialist - 20%
- Conservative - 10%
Under FPTP, the Nazi would be the top candidate in every constituency, and so win 10 out of 10 seats and have total control of the legislature, even though 60% of people voted anti-Nazi. This is the system in the UK and US.
Under a proportional system, you would allocate the seats in proportion to the votes cast - so 4 for the Nazis, 3 for the Liberals, 2 for the Socialists and 1 for the Conservatives. The non-Nazis would then have a legislative majority (6 out of 10 seats) that reflects how people actually voted, and could form an anti-Nazi coalition government. This is the system in the Netherlands or Germany for example.
Under a preferential system, you still elect seats on a constituency basis, but you make sure that the winning candidate is preferred by a majority of voters in the constituency - either by having multi-round elections or by having voters rank candidates instead of just voting for one. In a simplified system, you could rule out all but the top two candidates (in this case, Nazi and Liberal), and then have a second round of votes two weeks later for voters to decide between those two candidates to represent their seat. This tends to favour more moderate candidates so it’s likely under such a system that the Liberal would generally defeat the Nazi in the second round in most seats. This is the system in France.
There are also hybrid systems like Single Transferrable Vote, which simultaneously achieve proportionality and preferential voting - this is used in Ireland.
THIS IS NOT AT ALL HOW THE US WORKS
Under FPTP, the Nazi would be the top candidate in every constituency, and so win 10 out of 10 seats and have total control of the legislature, even though 60% of people voted anti-Nazi. This is the system in the UK and US.
This description is outrageously wrong regarding the US. Each contest is FPTP but we have many contests centered on geographic regions. Because of this the the breakdown you listed above for the 4 parties ends up with drastically different results based on how these people are distributed geographically. You could see anything from them winning virtual no seats to the majority of seats. You could NEVER win all seat
Our senate is 2 seats per state with some states having as little as around a half a million people and some having tens of millions. Our house is nominally more democratic but its not truly exactly proportional and its subject to gerrymandering.
It’s certainly broken enough to potentially practically provide 51% of the power to a party supported by 45% of the people but its not so bad as to provide 100% of control to someone with 40%
That hypothetical involved an evenly distributed political population, which would work that way under the US system.
There has never been an evenly distributed political population in the history of the US nor is there ever more than 2 major parties in any given contest. This isn’t just happenstance. By definition any third party that grows strong enough to count pulls votes from the party they are most alike ensuring the victory of the major party that is least like the small party.
For instance a normal race looks like 50 Republican 47 Democrat 3% split between 4 different parties. Say one party the libertarians which is aligned with Republicans in many respects gains in that singular race 6% to themselves next go round. This isn’t even enough for anyone to believe you could actually win just respectable enough for people to know you even EXIST. What happens is that you draw your votes mostly from would be Republican voters due the verisimilitude of your positions. You end up with something like
45% Republicans 46% Democrats 6% Libertarians 3% other
Congrats you both caused Republicans to lose ensuring the Democrat would torpedo the very positions you championed and ably demonstrated why no third party can ever get more than minor traction. This is a fundamental feature of the American political system.
That is exactly how the US system works, with a handful of exceptions.
For the election of a Senator or Representative - it’s almost always FPTP. The candidate that gets the most votes wins the seat, regardless of whether or not they got a majority of the vote. The state of Georgia is an example of an exception, as they hold a runoff election for Senator if the leading candidate falls short of 50% - as happened with the elections of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both of which went to runoff.
For the presidential election, this also how it works in the vast majority of cases. 100% of a state’s electoral college vote goes to the candidate that gets the most votes, regardless of whether or not they got a majority of the votes in the state. You have a situations like Texas in 2020 giving 38 electoral college votes to Trump and zero to Biden (versus a proportional allocation of more like 20 Trump, 17 Biden and 1 Jorgensen). That electoral college system results in situations like 1992, when Bill Clinton got a 370 vote electoral college landslide on 43% of the vote because of Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy, as well as situations like 2000 and 2016 where a Republican candidate who came 2nd in the national vote still came 1st in the electoral college by virtue of coming first past the post in enough individual states. (I believe the exceptions are Nebraska and Maine, which split their electoral college votes.)
First past the post
First Past The Post, which is more typically called ‘plurality’ in the US. Each person votes for only one candidate; the candidate with the most votes wins.
It’s normal language where I live and we’ve always had a multi-party democracy without FPTP
If you’re gonna ban Islam, at least ban every other religion at the same time so you don’t look like a racist.
Why do you think they give a shit about looking like a racist?
That would make him a leftist though
Yeah, it would.
I didn’t think you’d make the argument of “if you’re going to be a far right politician then at least be left”
It’s a circle, not a line. Far left and far right end up meeting in the middle.
I guess if you consider “we got rid of our differences” and “we got rid of the different people” to be the same it is
But if you’re talking about right wing governments pretending to be left for PR then I would discount them as just being right wing
Even atheism. And agnosticism. If you have a single opinion at all on theism you’re out.
I’m ok with that
Not elect fascists worldwide (challenge impossible )
What we really need now is a nice World War one.
A nice large draft to cull the world’s population and make sure the working class appreciates how good they have it to not be in a muddy trench.
Odd war to pick given it led to a rise in fascism
WW1 lead to fascism, fascism lead to WW2. What did WW2 lead to? And what leads to WW3?
Cold War > Capitalism > WW3
The cold war was a result of capitalism, not the other way around. Part of the reason the rest of Europe allowed fascism to rise was because it was more aligned with capitalism than some of the competing ideologies on the left, like socialism, communism, and anarchy.
I’d also say that capitalism lead to WW1. Capitalism is imperialism for the masses, and the war was directly an imperialist war. Plus, the emerging arms industry was playing off rivalries to make maximum money, which lead to that being the time where both sides thought that they had a temporary weaponry advantage over their rivals. Some thought “either fight and win a war we can win now or they’ll invade and win after their next upgrade cycle in 5 years”.
If Russia had won the Cold War then I would have wrote communism in that spot
The flaws of capitalism aren’t new or unique to capitalism, even the bible lists them as sins
There is no perfect system - humanity just needs to self-regulate when it goes to shit. When are we finall gonna eat the rich?
For effing sake, that is a stupid idea that is so widespread.
Beware of the broken window fallacy.
Wilders wants to ban mosques
That’s cool, as long as we ban churches, cathedrals, synagogues, and temples at the same time.
I really didnt know this guy was still around, he hasn’t been making the world headlines so much in recent years.
Don’t forget gurdwaras, stupas, and wats.
Oppressing people’s religious beliefs is not “cool.”
People will still practice those beliefs while they are being oppressed. It won’t create an atheist utopia. It’ll just create more terrorism, crime, and discrimination.
Ban religion it will be religious groups throwing down the governement.
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Took the convertion of one emperor
Limiting what structures can be built/open and where isn’t oppression, it’s standard government policy everywhere on earth. People can still believe whatever they want.
Only discriminatory if it favors one group over another, so ban them all.
I am not discussing structures.
Also the government restricting building at the whims of a local populace is what caused our current housing crisis so not exactly the argument I’d make about how efficient that system can be.
Why do they all have weird fucking hair?
At this point, it’s not even weird. I’m just glad they aren’t tarnishing any look I would miss. I mean, in an alternate universe, I could see myself rocking a Chaplin moustache. But they can have the thinning, wiry, bizarrely-styled blond look all to themselves.
Aww…the rest of the world is going through their own Trump phase now.
Shit’s contagious, like covid
You mean the Berlusconi phase, maybe.
It’s really weird to see Republicans doing poorly in the US while the far right makes gains in Europe
I don’t think it’s a phase in the short term unfortunately. The world shifted too far into PC culture, ‘acceptance’ to the point of segregating anyone with a differing opinion, cancelling anyone with an accusation against them prior to any sort of conviction etc and I really think it just pushed all the people who were quietly racist/sexist/whateverist to a point they are loud and standing up for what they think is right. It’s created a shift of what you can and can’t say backwards and suddenly a lot of people who still hold these opinions albeit very frowned upon felt empowered by seeing their opinions on TV, internet etc and began to speak up.
Just seems like the world is doomed to run in a cycle. I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
The slide towards far-right fascism continues…
Don’t worry, the headline is too sensational. (Which is a pet peeve of mine anyway: headlines should be objective. I can make up my own mind please)
He didn’t win a majority. He won’t form a goverment. If he does, he will be powerless in the coalition. If he does get to make laws, they won’t pass the senate (called “1ste kamer” in NL). And if he does, the government will fall anyway (which is a Dutch tradition anyway).
So a lot of ‘outs’ :)
No worries!
Only your last one seems valid. Dutch coalitions aren’t very stable. The only stable factor of the last 12 years has recently left politics.
The question is indeed who is willing to form a coalition government. The most likely option is PVV (far right), VVD (neoliberal), and NSC (Christian democrats), of the latter can convince their voters they can accept the far right.
Not very stable indeed. Since ‘Kok’ (2002!), NL has had 1 cabinet come to full term (Rutte II I believe). In 21 years 8 goverments. 1 full term of 4 years, so 7 in 17 years. Elections every 2,5 years on average :/
But hey, at least NL is not Belgium :D
*Sad Belgian noises
the world is falling to fascism. Fuck this goddamn planet just smite us already jesus fucking christ
If the conservatives want for Jesus to come down himself to smite us, THIS is how they will get them to come down himself to smite us. I hate how this happens
The left just has to stop taking in muslims first
I guess netherlands was like, “you know, things have been going too well here”
Things have been going shit here actually, and blaming minorities for a country’s problems is still a surefire way to win votes. As a dutch person I’m sad, embarrassed, and scared.
the Netherlands has been on a steady decline, and housing especially has been a massive issue
the netherlands is a good country because we are still benefitting off of our past, but we are not improving
This is happening because things haven’t been going well. Same can be seen all over Europe. Shit times and whether for a good reason or not, immigration issues have become a big issue in the minds of the people. Established moderate parties have avoided addressing that issue and that’s why far-right parties, who keep banging on about being strict on immigration and immigrants, keep winning a bigger share.
Moderates are handing far-right votes by ignoring what people are concerned about. I know it’s a dilemma to parties who don’t consider it an issue (do you really want to go in on an issue you don’t believe is an issue), but people think it’s an issue and feel like they aren’t being heard.
The worlds sick of liberalism, so their solution is…fascism.
🫣
I’m assuming that the clothing and appearance copying Trump are on purpose.
He has looked like that far before trump meant something outside of the US.
Gotcha. Thanks for the info!
What the fuck is happening to the world?
Good question. But honestly you just got to look at history for the answer. Far-right extremism often do better when it’s hard times like we have right now.
Far right extremists claim easy solutions to complex problems. With housing etc pricea going through the roof it’s easy to demonize foreigners etc.
Look what happened in Germany with hyper inflation.
This is the first generation with worse prospects than the previous one. Wealth inequality is growing, and robber barons are back. Climate change is making any prospects even worse.
Combine that with a communication revolution (social media, to be exact) which allows anyone to pretty much target anyone else with any message they feel like, means disinformation pushing narratives is everywhere. And not to forget, there people in charge of these platforms are among the aforementioned robber barons.
It’s easy to offer simple solutions to these problems and push disinformation to people who don’t have the knowledge, time or energy to debunk everything and think deeply about things, since they’re busy slaving away to put food on their tables, struggling to build a future, and looking for solutions. And simple answers give people a sense of control or explanation over their difficult situation.
It’s why I have completely removed myself from every social media platform there is, except this one and I’m only on here intermittently.
True, but the generation that tends to vote far right is the boomer generation - it’s the generation that failed to pass on rising prosperity and gave us the climate crisis.
If you look at elections in europe, it’s pretty consistently the 35-45 year old demographic that votes right the most. Every age group votes right and it’s not like it’s only boomers, with the exception of young voters <30 (and women) which do vote significantly more left
E. G. Netherlands https://www.statista.com/chart/8178/pvv-largest-party-but-not-among-youth/
Do we know why? For Americans, I can see the nihilism of the grunge era affecting the latter part of that group, and possibly having a lasting effect towards political compass.
But I can’t think of a reason of the top of my head for European millennials driving so deep into that side of politics.
It seems you are more equipped to deal with the disinformation on social media than most of us. Although I understand the desire to step away from the fray, a mind like yours is sorely needed in times like this.
That is not true unfortunately. I tend to be very left wing socially - economically I’m more left of center - and that was reflected on my social media as well - either pushing me towards more radical content or stoking anger with more radical right wing content to get me riled up and coming back for more.
I ended up with a growing hatred and emnity for a growing number of people and “groups”, and black and white thinking. Even though I was aware that I was being manipulated, it was still impossible to sit on a high horse above the fray.
It’s quite easy to manipulate human minds, even ones that are careful and aware. We can all be manipulated. It’s why advertising works, for example.
The only thing to do really is to not play that game. Avoid advertising, avoid other content curators deciding what you get to see and telling you how to reason, etc… realise that most people are empathetic, that most people want what’s best, and those that are radical have been manipulated to be that way, sadly.
“Politics of me” beats “politics of we” once again.
More like “politics of being to dumb to see further than the tip of if my own nose”.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a dramatic result that will stun European politics, his Freedom Party (PVV) is set to win around 35 of the 150 seats in parliament — more than double the number it secured in the 2021 election, according to exit polls.
Dilan Yeşilgöz, outgoing premier Mark Rutte’s successor as head of the center-right VVD, suffered heavy losses and is on course to take 24 seats, 10 fewer than before, according to the updated exit poll by Ipsos for national broadcaster NOS.
A win for Wilders will put the Netherlands on track — potentially — for a dramatic shift in direction, after Rutte’s four consecutive centrist governments.
“This exit poll is historic; it is the biggest shift we have ever seen in the Netherlands,” political scientist Tom van der Meer told national broadcaster NOS.
And Pieter Omtzigt, whose newly formed party is projected to win 20 seats, has previously ruled out joining forces with Wilders at all, saying his anti-Islam policies go against freedoms of expression and religion that are enshrined in the Dutch constitution.
She ended the short speech thanking her team and supporters, and left the stage to the sound of Dua Lipa’s Dance the Night followed by Avicii’s Wake me Up.
The original article contains 1,049 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I bet I can do even better: PVV got 30 of 150 seats. They might be able to use these for something or they might not.
what does that mean for policy changes in the Netherlands? without parliamentary majority, can he make any real changes?
