Tomorrow... we vote! Elections in the Netherlands

[beelikej]

Okay, so: elections! This is a long text post, but with all that's going on in the world, I thought it would be good to write down how we do elections in the Netherlands

Comments

[amberdreams]

Everybody's electoral systems seem complicated to me but I'm all for having more parties to choose from. I'm also for more women - especially ones who don't think they need to behave like men in order to get into power.

[beelikej]

I think we have the most transparant electoral system in the world: the percentage of votes is the same as the percentage of seats in the House; there are no hidden calculations:)
Unfortunately we still have a lot of work to do to even out the balance between men and women in politics.

[jimbobjoe]

This was most informative. Thank you for posting!

All of this makes me think that the viewpoints in your country are not nearly so far apart, as they are in the US. Here, so many people with such wildly different opinions make collaboration difficult!

[jimbobjoe]

I wanted to come back here and say that there was an article in my newspaper about your elections, and THANKS TO THIS POST, I actually understood the article! :DDD

[beelikej]

This made me so proud to hear! I tried to write it down without checking sources first, just to see if I had understood our system myself *grins* Thanks for letting me know I succeeded in explaining it:)

[beelikej]

You're welcome:) Oh, we do have extremes, but with so many options to choose from, those parties tend to stay small. Forming a decisive goverment with all the spread out politics is quite a challenge:)

[meesasometimes]

Personally I think it's the sheer size of the US that results in such varying political views. It makes me think that more power to the states is a good idea. Not a popular opinion. But imagine if all of Europe had to come together for one person, how many people may not be represented.

At this point if they split our country in two and said this side is liberal and this one conservative I'd be happy. And I'd move.

I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of political parties you have. holy cow.

[beelikej]

True, the bigger a country, the more difficult to keep things together, but that's why I'm so surprised by the limited two party system in the USA. It's weird to me that you have to choose between one or the other, because you can be in favor of less government spending and still suport a women's right to choose for instance, yet in America it often seems like one party is simply against something because the other party is in favor of it.
We may have gone a bit overboard with the amount of parties, but at least I can find one to represent me more precisely than just on one issue and the parties are forced to work together instead of against each other;)

I'll do a follow up post later with the results.

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Exit polls look good! (At least re PVV, if not quite as good as the Greens might have hoped.) And it sounds like turnout was really high - just saw a tweet saying 100% at Wageningen uni!

I'm so glad you're not looking anti-EU (as one of our madder newspapers keeps suggesting) or as xenophobic as it might have been. I need my faith in Western Europe since the Anglophone democracies are so monumentally dire at the moment.

[beelikej]

The turn out was amazing! 80,8% compared to 74,6% in 2012, it made me proud:) Biggest relief is that PVV did not end up the biggest party; now Wilders will just have to wait his turn (and most likely end up in the opposition, because nobody wants to collaborate in a government with the PVV).
His party was really the only one with hysterical anti-EU sentiments; the rest of our politicians are more pragmatic about the EU.

I'll do a proper follow up post about the results later. For now I'm really happy my Green Left party did so well. (They won more seats than they ever even had in the House!)

[ullman79]

I stumbled onto this post by accident and ended up telling a friend friend who's moving to Rotterdam and wanted to know a bit more about (among many other things, heh) the Dutch electoral system to use this post as a starting point. She found it most informative, and we're now having interesting discussions about the formation. :) I 'always' vote PvdD but was also more than chuffed about the GL results!

[beelikej]

Apologies for the late reply: I've been traveling and was only able to lurk online in the past two weeks.
Happy to hear this post started a discussion! I plan to do an update after the formation. (and now we wait...)