The far-right and anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders is heading for a massive parliamentary election victory. It's one of the biggest political upsets in Dutch politics since World War II and one that is bound to send shockwaves through Europe.
This is really interesting and I don’t have a definitive answer as to why – while Europe is experiencing a series of far right victories, the US electorate is rejecting the far right. Trumpists and opponents of abortion rights have generally been losing by significant margin, in off election years no less.
What do you guys think is the cause? Part of me wonders if Trump was so bad that the collective American electorate is firmly sick of far right shit. And overturning Roe just further emphasized that and went way too far. In effect, the American right has pushed so extreme that it’s created a powerful whiplash effect.
Another thought is the subject matter – immigration and Muslim refugees aren’t really a big deal here. We’re a nation of immigrants, and that makes us naturally more left on the subject, maybe?
Geert Wilders’ party is the largest party, but that doesn’t mean the majority voted for him. I would say generally 25 out of 150 seats go to parties like Wilders’ party.
This time a lot of people voted Wilders as a protest vote (37 seats in total), but I expect a lot of the votes to return to the center-right party during the next elections.
People are fed up with a lot of mismanagement in our government, but they punish center-right coalitions by voting even further on the right while blaming the left (even though most of the left hasn’t ever been part of the government coalition).
I bet that if you take away the housing and cost of living crises, people wouldn’t be taking about immigration so much. It would help tremendously if the government wouldn’t mismanage the asylum procedures as much as it does.
This is really interesting and I don’t have a definitive answer as to why – while Europe is experiencing a series of far right victories, the US electorate is rejecting the far right. Trumpists and opponents of abortion rights have generally been losing by significant margin, in off election years no less.
What do you guys think is the cause? Part of me wonders if Trump was so bad that the collective American electorate is firmly sick of far right shit. And overturning Roe just further emphasized that and went way too far. In effect, the American right has pushed so extreme that it’s created a powerful whiplash effect.
Another thought is the subject matter – immigration and Muslim refugees aren’t really a big deal here. We’re a nation of immigrants, and that makes us naturally more left on the subject, maybe?
Geert Wilders’ party is the largest party, but that doesn’t mean the majority voted for him. I would say generally 25 out of 150 seats go to parties like Wilders’ party.
This time a lot of people voted Wilders as a protest vote (37 seats in total), but I expect a lot of the votes to return to the center-right party during the next elections.
People are fed up with a lot of mismanagement in our government, but they punish center-right coalitions by voting even further on the right while blaming the left (even though most of the left hasn’t ever been part of the government coalition).
I bet that if you take away the housing and cost of living crises, people wouldn’t be taking about immigration so much. It would help tremendously if the government wouldn’t mismanage the asylum procedures as much as it does.
Trumpers don’t realize there’s more to vote for than just POTUS.