Dutch municipal elections & overestimation of ‘right’ rise

March third municipal elections were held in the Netherlands. After the recent fall of our government, the general prognosis was that ring winged, libertarian parties would do well, while those belonging to the camp traditionally labeled as left were expected to lose some power.

This was not widely off mark. The two largest shareholders of the former cabinet -  Christian Democrats (CDA) and Labor (PvdA)- were waiting for a showdown wherein we could see whom would receive the blame for both the cabinet’s fall, as well as unpopular crisis management and a general pessimistic mood when it comes to political decisiveness.

As soon as you start taking a look at the broader picture, however, there is as much a general trend as there is wide-spread disagreement. The Christian Democrats and Labor both lost quite a lot of seats, but the first is still the third largest party in vote count (nearly 15%), and largest when it comes to total seat numbers (1463), while the latter is still the largest party in the Netherlands with 15,8% of total votes. Labor did badly in comparison to 2006, but as soon as you compare their performance to the European elections it was not bad.

Libertarian parties, of which VVD and D66 are considered to be prominent ones, did reasonably well too, with 1,8% and 5,4% increases respectively (in comparison to 2006 figures).  Most noteworthy, maybe, is the popularity of the so called ‘Municipal Interests’ (Gemeente Belangen): Count all their seats, and they are by far the most powerful, though of course their aims are specifically tied to municipalities and without their name little remains of a common core binding them to any ‘political wing’ (note that his is pragmatic, and not at all a bad thing).

Most interest was aimed at Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV). Several newspaper reports drew my attention, especially foreign ones for their bold statements that ‘extreme right wingers are on the rise’. No such thing has happened, at least not generally. The Christian Democrats are centre right, while Labor is considered to be leaning towards the left, if not outright left.  And they are two of the three largest parties. The two cities where the PVV did run for elections were The Hague and Almere: Their results were good, becoming second in The Hague, first in Almere.  Noteworthy is that Labor still has the largest share in The Hague.

Libertarians did well, as I already stated. Yet that is not the same as ‘rising extreme right’, as neither VVD nor D66 share such outlooks when it comes to issues of integration and immigration. One could consider VVD as a right-wing party, no doubt, but hardly extreme. D66 is the self-labeled party ‘of pragmatists’, admired or despised for their intellectual, education minded philosophy while stressing language, social conditions and respect as solutions for integration problems rather than the harsh, sometimes painful, words of Wilders.

This is not to deny the performance by Wilders’ and his, as rumor has it, carefully selected politicians. But all in all we ought to look at the facts. And the facts tell us just two municipalities where his freedom party PVV entered the fray. There his score was excellent.  Sadly for some bitter minds, the limit of his scope also means the limit of the extreme right, so you could easily shed light on the elections in a totally different way by looking at, for instance, Utrecht, where ‘Green Left’ (Groen Links) was victorious. That drew my attention, as a party on the left became the biggest despite recent major problems in involving clashes of ethnic groups (you could try and explain this away by non-native votes or something like it, only by missing my point).

As elections were held all over the country, it is impossible to sum up all the data while also getting to a decent conclusion. Even with the numbers we have used here, I still don’t think it is possible to do it. That is simply because some parties have lost in accordance with prior beliefs and expectations. We all knew the PVV was popular in some parts and for obvious reasons, but their ideas aren’t as one sides as the press often depicts it. Wilders is experienced, knows how political business works and will do all he can to put that to good use.

And calculation is of vital importance these days. How can we tie the results to conclusions? Sometimes left wingers did well, even better than several years ago, sometimes they did reasonable well by simply maintaining a prominent share of power, and sometimes they failed. Wherever one party failed, another one took off. There is no trend that cannot be defied by comparing cross-municipal elections. To actually be able to spot a general trend means waiting till June, when parliamentary elections will take stage again.