Here in the Netherlands, we had elections last Wednesday, March 15th. As you’ve probably heard, the incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte got re-elected by a wide margin, and the racist Geert Wilders — he’s been called the Dutch Donald Trump — got only 19 of 150 seats in Parliament.
I am an American from New York City (raised in NJ) and moved here with my Dutch husband and kids 2 years ago. To me, this feels like a mostly open, progressive society that is welcoming to immigrants, but as with Brexit and the rise of Le Pen in France, there is a growing group of Dutch people willing to vote for a candidate who is anti-immigrant and explicitly racist, especially against Moroccan-Dutch people. So we felt the eyes of the world on this election. I wanted to share my experience of what I learned while going through these elections, the thinking of progressive Dutch voters, etc.
(a) It's a Parliamentary system, with 150 seats in the 2nd chamber; Seats are not Percentages.
When you read that a party got 33 seats (VVD, center-right, the incumbent prime minister Mark Rutte) or that Geert Wilders increased to 19 seats, you have to divide that by 1.5 to get a percentage. So only about 13% of Dutch people voted for Wilders. But it is still a scary number.
(b) Liberal means something different in Europe.
Whereas in America, it generally means left-wing, and its a label that conservatives use when they try to tarnish our candidates, in Europe it usually means being in favor of looser regulations than the status quo, less bureaucracy, etc., so it is often used as synonymous with center-right. Bear in mind the center seems to be much farther left here in Europe.
(c) My husband was a candidate!
My husband, Eelco Keij, was on the ballot in spot number 39 for D66, a party that I think it rather left-wing, but some leftists in Holland insist that its center-right. D66 increased from 12 seats to 19. That was not enough for him to secure a seat in Parliament, unless he has also gotten 17,340 direct votes. However, he ran to highlight the challenges for Dutch ex-pats, Dutch immigrants, and Dutch re-immigrants (people like him who leave and return), and he was able to get a lot of media attention on these issues, and persuaded many voters to vote for his party D66, which is farther to the left than the typical favorite party of Dutch ex-pats.
(d) The Spoiler effect is Different in a Parliamentary System.
When I speak to progressive people in Europe, many of them are torn between voting for their favorite candidate, or voting for the best candidate in their country that can beat the most awful candidate in their country. The French are dealing with this now in their 1st and 2nd round elections coming up this spring in which Le Pen is very popular, and several other candidates are running. Several weeks ago, many Dutch lefties were considering voting for the center-right PM because they did not want Geert Wilders to get the most votes. But then a few things happened: The four major parties said they would not govern with Wilders, so he effectively could not be Prime Minister. Also the polls tightened between some of the non-Wilders parties, there was a sense that any vote that wasn't for Wilders was essentially a vote against him. Then, the diplomatic incident with the Turkish government happened, and it seemed very clear that the incumbent PM was going to win again, even without strategic voting. I met the head of the Labor party this summer at a wedding and really liked his policy ideas for service workers. The leader of the GreenLeft party is a charismatic Moroccan-Dutch 27-year-old with good ideas and a strong movement behind him. So the Dutch left had many options.
Here’s some links in English if you want to read more:
Election results: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/03/rutte-jubilation-at-election-result-whoa-to-the-wrong-sort-of-populism/
My husband’s campaign for the ex-pat vote:
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/03/d66-wins-dutch-expat-vote-overtakes-the-vvd/