With the elections being on June 9th, the parties started their election campaigns about 1-2 weeks ago. Parties are starting to spread their propaganda now, the first television and radio debates were last week and more are comming up. So it's full gear for all politcal parties to convince people to vote on them.
______________________________________________________________________
A quick summary of the Dutch politcal parties:
The Dutch politcal parties The Dutch have the following left(ish) parties:-
PvdA = Partij van de Arbeid (Party of [the] Labour), center left.
-
SP = Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party), left.
-
GL = Groen Links (Green Left), left.
-
PvdD = Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the animals), left.
The following are conservative (and not uncommonly labeled as rightish):-
CDA = Christen Democratisch Appèl (Christian Democrat Party/Allience), a bit conservative a bit liberal
-
CU = Christen Unie (Christian Union), a more conservative party, also a bit more social (due to the social aspect of the bible)
-
SGP = Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (Polical Calvinists Party), a very orthox/conservative party.
The following parties are liberal (following the ideology of liberalism, often labeled as rightish):-
D66 = Democraten '66 (Democrats '66) centrist/somewhat-liberal, it ain't extremely (economically) liberal orientated neither very social orientated.
-
VVD = Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (PeoplesParty for Freedom and Democracy), liberal party (socially but especially economically), favours coporations so to say.
And the two "populist party's are also seen as liberal, and the political leaders actually left the liberal VVD party:-
PVV = Partij Voor de Vrijheid (Party for [the] Freedom), individualist populist party, let by Geert Wilders.
-
ToN = Trots op Nederland (Proud of the Netherlands), an other individualist populist party.
(Bit outdated, 2006, compass):
And then there are a few new and minor parties such as "Lijst 1" and I believe the Pirate Party is also running.. haven't heard much about those yet though... It seems rather unlikely that they will win any seats.
And no, we don't have any silly First Past The Post systems, it's simple a representative vote to devide the 150 lower house seats.
________________________________________________________________________________
What have polls shown so far during the past weeks?Just after the goverment stepped down, and during the municipal elections surveys indicated a the CDA to be head, closely followed by the PvdA and PVV. Though things appear to have dramatically in the course of 4-5 weeks. It took me by suprise for sure. Just before my holiday in mid March, Geert Wilder's PVV party seemed to take 1st or 2nd place in surveys, but after I came back they lost a lot of support in favour of the liberal VVD.
Surveys:Current polls predicts the following amount of seats:
VVD (Conservative Liberals): 38 - 36 - 36
PvdA (Labour, SocialDem): 29 - 32 - 29
CDA (ChristianDemocrats): 25 - 20 - 25
PVV (Populist NationalConservative): 17 - 19 - 17
D66 (centrist/socialliberal): 9 - 12 - 9
SP (DemocraticSocialists): 10 - 9 - 11
GL (Greenparty): 11 - 9 - 11
CU (ChristianCons): 7 - 9 - 8
SGP (ChristianCons): 2 - 2 - 2
PvdD (Animalparty): 2 - 1 - 2
ToN (populist ConservativeLiberal): 0 - 1 - 0
Others (Pirate Party, Lijst 17, Human&Spirit party, ...): 0 - 0 - 0
Sources:
Synovate,
TNS Nipo and
Peil/deHond, respectively.
The reason? In February-March the main topic was intergration and safety. But now the main topic became economics (the whole deal with the euro, publication of the research into the banking crisis etc.). Wilders and his PVV ruled supreme in the intergration and safety debate but he's much weaker when it comes to economics. The VVD however has constistently hammered on fixing the economy, creating jobs and making the goverment more efficient (laying off X goverment workers to safe money).
Possible coalitions: VVD+CDA+PVV, VVD+CDA+D66, VVD+PvdA+D66(+GL).
A leftish coalition (PvdA+SP+GL+D66) seems rather unlikely. So we may see a centrist (centre left, centrist, centre right) as usual, or a rightwing coalition. A right winged coalition with PVV would also be tricky due some majot disagreements between PVV on one side and the VVD and CDA on the other, mainly about intergration and the age of retirment. In additional several prominent (ex) party members have threatend to resign their membership of either the CDA or VVD party.