All the colours of the Dutch democratic rainbow
0 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Sunday, November 26 at Sunday, November 26, 2006.
There was a general election in the Netherlands last week, and in true Dutch style, the election result is about as inclusive, diverse and tolerant of different viewpoints as you can imagine. Everybody won. Here's how it all went down:
Dutch Tweede Kamer seats as of 2006
Does that remind you of something else you might associate with the Netherlands??
Nobody has anywhere near the numbers to form government, and even a big coalition is looking difficult to form. Definitely an interesting election outcome, with the votes becoming polarised - a big drop in votes for the more established mainstream centre right and centre left parties, with the gap being picked up by the more extreme parties on both sides, and a lot of random smaller parties also doing better than expected.
What do the Dutchies think of this? Floor has an interesting wrap up of what happened - lots of interesting stuff. The nutty right wing Brussels Journal has a good hard think about things and then does what he does with every other issue in Europe, and blames it on the Muslims. And the pan-European group blog A Fistful of Euros has a pretty decent run through, with lots of links to other stuff.
To me, it says something about how comfortably middle class and post-political a society has become when the Animal Rights party wins 2 seats in parliament. Its a really nice life they are living in the Netherlands these days - and I get the feeling that politics there just doesn't matter as much as it does in other places.
Dutch Tweede Kamer seats as of 2006
| ██ PvdD (2)██ D66 (3)██ GL (7)██ SP (25)██ PvdA (33) | ██ CU (6)██ CDA (41)██ VVD (22)██ SGP (2)██ PVV (9) |
Does that remind you of something else you might associate with the Netherlands??
Nobody has anywhere near the numbers to form government, and even a big coalition is looking difficult to form. Definitely an interesting election outcome, with the votes becoming polarised - a big drop in votes for the more established mainstream centre right and centre left parties, with the gap being picked up by the more extreme parties on both sides, and a lot of random smaller parties also doing better than expected.
What do the Dutchies think of this? Floor has an interesting wrap up of what happened - lots of interesting stuff. The nutty right wing Brussels Journal has a good hard think about things and then does what he does with every other issue in Europe, and blames it on the Muslims. And the pan-European group blog A Fistful of Euros has a pretty decent run through, with lots of links to other stuff.
To me, it says something about how comfortably middle class and post-political a society has become when the Animal Rights party wins 2 seats in parliament. Its a really nice life they are living in the Netherlands these days - and I get the feeling that politics there just doesn't matter as much as it does in other places.
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