Election Day here in Holland. I don't get to play along. *sad face* I can vote in municipal elections after five years' residence, but only Dutch citizens get to vote in the general elections. And they do. Voter turnout runs between 75 and 80% for Dutch general elections. (The 56.8% US turnout in 2008 was the highest since 1968. Multiparty system, I'm telling you.)
"Normal" elections are in March on a Wednesday. By "normal," I mean at the end of the four-year maximum term. Parliament (the Tweede Kamer) decides the exact date for the election. This also applies when, as in this case, the ruling coalition loses its ability to lead. That happened in spring, although Parliament has continued to function quite normally in the meantime. "The government has fallen" doesn't mean quite the same thing here.
Elections have to be held with a lead time of around 3 months, to allow for arrangements for non-resident Dutch citizens to vote as well and to allow time for political parties to register candidate lists for the election. Since the government fell in April, that would put elections in the summer. Summer elections are avoided because too many people are on holiday then. That moved them along to September. While elections could have been held last week, Monday 10 September was a big day for NL, as that's when the National budget had to be sent to the EU, so here we are.
As of 8 September, VVD and PvdA would each capture 35 seats of the 150 seats available. This represents an increase for both parties, from 31 and 30, respectively. PVV would drop from 24 seats to 19, being passed by SP who would increase from 15 to 21 seats. The remaining seats would be shared by CDA, D66, CU, GL, SGP, PvdD, and 50 plus.
Nice letters. Who are they? VVD, People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, while far left of the American Republican Party, is towards the right in Dutch politics. They're essentially Libertarians. PvdA, the Worker's Party, is a Democratic Socialist party, pragmatic socialists who look for ways to make the ideas of a social society work in the real world. PVV, Party for Peace and Freedom, is a quasi-socialist party whose central idea is that the enemy of peace and freedom is multi-culturalism. SP, the Socialist Party, is just that.
But wait, none of those is more than half of 150. That's the idea. The party with the most votes has the first chance to form a coalition that does account for more than half of the 150 seats. If they can't, then the second-largest party has the opportunity to present a coalition capable of governing. Mind you, the poll numbers I've shown are four days old.
This is an election about the question of whether austerity on the backs of the populace should be the primary method of paying for the debt created by the cascade triggered by fraudulently rated American bank derivatives, or whether education and healthcare should be preserved at the expense of the wealthy, or better said, where the proper balance is between those two approaches. VVD puts the balance point solely on austerity measures and even cut taxes on the wealthy. PvdA is left-of-center toward preserving social infrastructure. SP is is the polar opposite of VVD on this question.
Today, the voters will speak.
