Just as a heads-up for American readers:
That doesn’t mean the far-right party lost. They don’t go home with nothing. They go to the European Parliament with 7 seats, the fact that the Labour-Green alliance has 1 more doesn’t change anything.That’s a relief! Hopefully the far-right wave has bottomed out by the next election.
The problem is that the populist, nationalist right tends to be good in opposition, because they can shout simplistic slogans and don’t have to actually deliver anything.
According to national polls, the PVV would have now ca. 48 out a total of 150 seats in the Dutch House of Representatives; so a 32%.
In this exit poll, PVV won 7 out of a total of 31 European Parliament seats, or 22,5%.
On the other hand PVV went from 1 to 7 seats in the EP. A huge far-right surge was/ is expected for the EP election. But in the Netherlands, it didn’t turn out as high as was predicted.
I suspect that the people who vote nationalistic populists into power are less interested in European elections.
And possibly these voters also dislike the amount of water the PVV has already had to add to their wine to get a coalition going on national level. Water such as guarantees that the constitution is not blatently broken.
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Well, it could have been worse (and in the general election just a few months back it actually was a lot worse, so there’s that). On top of that, The Putin-loving white supremacist party of Thierry Baudet lost all their 4 seats.
So yeah, I’m not dancing on the table with this result, but am kinda relieved
Well, it is better than a majority. Still disheartening.