Read most liberal papers’ coverage of the October 29 elections in the Netherlands and you find this sort of headline: “Far Right Beaten, Dutch Good Sense Restored.” After two bruising years in office following an unprecedented electoral victory for Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) in 2023, the experiment of a PVV-led government collapsed. This time, neat technocrats from the liberal-democratic Democrats 66 (D66) look set to steer a pro-EU cabinet. It sounds like a return to steady hands.
But on closer inspection, that is hardly the whole tale — especially for anyone on the Left. Three numbers should make us pause.
First, after the October 29 vote, the core trio of far-right parties — PVV, JA21 (Conservative Liberals), and Forum for Democracy — hold forty-two of hundred fifty seats. In 2023, they held forty-one. Wilders’s party lost eleven, yet JA21 jumped from one to nine and Forum rose from three to seven. In total, they control nearly one-third of the 150-seat parliament. This reshuffle is mainly tactical: once every mainstream party said it would refuse to govern with Wilders, many hard-right voters simply parked their ballot with JA21 or Forum, instead of abandoning this kind of politics altogether.
Second, the combined forces of the Left, in all their colors, have crashed to just thirty seats. The GreenLeft–Labor coalition fell from twenty-five to twenty, the Socialists from five to three. The further-left BIJ1 had already lost its single seat in 2023. It failed to regain it, and no newcomer filled the gap.
That 20 percent share of seats in parliament is the leanest left-wing bench the Netherlands has recorded since the advent of universal suffrage. This is even more remarkable given the context of this election, following the collapse of a right-wing government widely regarded as a failure. It also followed an election campaign in which economic issues (including housing and health care) were salient to many voters, which…
Auteur: Enzo Rossi
