Politics

The Dutch election – it’s complicated and it’s worrying

The burghers of Utrecht

Last Wednesday the Dutch cycled off to vote

Media coverage about the Dutch election has been mostly about the unexpected success of Geert Wilders’ Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV). Most political columnists place PVV at the far end of the left-right spectrum because of Wilders’ openly expressed anti-Muslim statements, his hostility towards the EU, his opposition to military support for Ukraine and its possible EU membership, and his belief that the Netherlands should to take no action on climate change – a strange stance in view of the Netherlands’ geography.

Worldwide, already buoyed by the success of Javier Milei in Argentina, the far right is celebrating Wilders’ success. Deutsche Welle quotes ebullient congratulatory messages from Hungary’s Victor Orbán and France’s Marine Le Pen.

Wilders’ PVV party more than doubled its parliamentary representation, from 17 to 37 seats, making it the largest party in parliament. More impressive is a similar rise in his party’s popular vote – 24 percent in this election, up from 11 percent in the 30 months since the 2021 election was held.

But before the right of the world breaks out champagne and joins in singing the Horst- Wessel Lied, it should note that PVV is still far short of a majority in the country’s 150-seat parliament (by comparison our Parliament has 151 seats.) To govern PVV would have to form a coalition with at least two other parties, and because Wilders’ views are so extreme, that coalition would have to be with parties on his left.

That coalition, if it can be formed, is most likely to be with two of the centrist parties (ruling out the possibility that he would ever go for a broad left-right-green coalition as in Germany). Making life more difficult for Wilders is the pledge by many other party leaders not to give Wilders a vote of confidence. (That’s somewhat akin to our election in 1922 when the Country Party accepted a coalition deal with the right-wing Nationalist party on the condition that it drop Billy Hughes as leader.)

Also the swing to PVV was at the expense of centrist parties, particularly those that had comprised the governing coalition put together by Max Rutte. The parties that could call themselves green or left did not experience any overall swing.[1]

Then there was timing. The election was held just 13 days after the Hamas slaughter and before the extent of the reaction by the Israel’s government was manifest: the timing for Wilders was perfect. Another issue that motivated the right was what the press call the “nitrogen wars”, referring to a protest by farmers against the government’s intention to regulate farmers’ use of nitrogenous fertilizers, which emit compounds contributing to global heating.[2]

On last week’s Saturday Extra there is a 14-minute interview with Rik Rutten, political reporter for the Dutch media company NRC – Far-right party wins Dutch election, but will Wilders be PM?. Rutten sees the PVV success in part as a swing within the centre right rather than as a broader left-to-right swing. There was also some of the same turning inwards as occurred with Brexit – little Netherlands emulating little England. In view of both countries’ long history as colonial and trading powers, that’s a significant shift.

The most significant issue seems to have been immigration. It’s hard to imagine that the Dutch are too worried about the absolute number of immigrants (a concern among many Australians): the Netherlands’ population, as in many other European countries, is ageing and is hardly growing. In view of its long tradition as an open, liberal society, it’s equally hard to imagine that some form of crude racism has taken hold. But, as in Germany, there is unease about immigration from Middle-East countries. Wilders’ campaign was not about a “White Netherlands” – a European version of “White Australia”. It was about Muslims, particularly asylum-seekers – probably shorthand for immigrants from the Middle East.

A later ABC interview with Stijn van Kessel of London’s Queen Mary University confirms the importance of immigration in the campaign. It’s the issue on which Wilders is standing most firmly.

Van Kessel also notes that the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratien (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, VVD), which has won 24 seats, does not want to form a coalition with Wilders. Similarly The Economist reports that the Nieuw Sociaal Contract, a newly-formed centre-right party which has won 20 seats, does not intend to deal with Wilders. Wilders could be forced to deal with a number of very small parties to get his 76 seats. As is often the case in the Netherlands, coalition-building could take a long time.

There is a view, expressed by Catherine de Vries in Social Europe, that once parties on the far right win office the responsibilities of governing push them towards the centre. She notes that in Italy Giorgia Meloni’s government has mellowed since winning office.

The hard reality is that voters in Europe are throwing their weight behind parties of the hard right. This isn’t the right of free markets and open trade. Rather it is the isolationist right that tends to regard large corporations just as unfavourably as it does government. In many ways it’s a pre-capitalist movement. Even Marx had praise for capitalism when he compared it with feudalism.

1. Anyone who has an evening to spare can transcribe data from Wikipedia to analyze the swings experienced by the country’s 28 parties, after deciding how to classify parties such as those standing for “minorities” or animal rights. ↩

2. The linked Guardian article has it wrong where it writes that the government is trying to reduce emissions of nitrogen: nitrogen is 80 percent of what we breathe. The problem emissions are ammonia, methane and nitrous oxide, contributors to global heating and local pollution. But the Guardian article is worth a glance for its picture of a huge farmer protest with tractors 10 abreast. By comparison our farmers’ protests about water buybacks look rather pathetic. ↩

Opinion polls – no good news for anyone

Essential: voters want government to get a move-on

The Essential Report of 28 November presents a picture of an electorate fed-up with the government. They’re the results one would expect in response to a government that’s been in office for ten years and has run out of oomph, not a government from a reformist party that’s been in office for only 18 months.

The national mood, indicated by a growing belief that Australia is headed on the wrong track, is deteriorating. (Unfortunately Essential never asks respondents what they believe the “right track” should be.)

Voters give the government poor ratings on its handling of climate change, the cost of living and housing affordability. Older voters are particularly critical of the government on these dimensions. There are understandable partisan differences, but even Labor voters give the government low ratings on these issues. The percent of “excellent” or “above average” responses from Labor voters are:

Labor voters probably don’t need any convincing that problems on these issues are traceable to 18 years of Coalition economic mismanagement. But they do expect the government to be doing something concrete on these fronts.

In the same vein the Coalition now shows up ahead of Labor (33 percent to 25 percent) as the party better at handling the economy. Older voters are particularly likely to give the Coalition a high rating on economic management. To anyone with even a basic knowledge of economics, the idea that a government led by Peter Dutton, with Sussan Ley, Dan Tehan and Angus Taylor in key economic portfolios, could manage the Australian economy any better than their predecessors is laughable. But that’s the voters’ growing perception.

The government is trying to explain its economic policy, but is not getting through, and, perhaps, is not seen to be doing enough. The poll reveals strong support for a number of possible economic interventions:

There are partisan differences on these proposals, but they’re not strong.

Some economists may look at these specific proposals and assess that they would be ineffective, or have unintended consequences, but the general point is that the electorate is begging the government to be more active in reining in profiteering and in making the economic system fairer.

There is another set of propositions on tax measures:

On these questions there are partisan differences: the Coalition has always considered taxation to be an unmitigated evil. Labor has never explained why it has quietly dropped action on family trusts from its policy platform.

In relation to taxation, the most telling finding is that only 20 percent of respondents believe that the planned income tax changes – the “stage 3” tax cuts – should go ahead in their present form. Most people believe they should be modified to make them fairer. There are partisan differences, but only 29 percent of Coalition voters believe they should go through unmodified.

It is hard to see any reason, based in economics or politics, for the government to proceed with the cuts as originally designed. John Hewson, writing in his Saturday Paper contribution – Labor needs young voters – covers both grounds. It would be fiscally irresponsible to inject more net spending into the economy at the same time as the Reserve Bank is pushing monetary policy in the other direction. Turning to the politics, Hewson states that a responsible and progressive re-structuring of the cuts would be a winner for the government, particularly in shoring up and mobilizing the youth vote. He writes:

The government is focusing on the political risks of dropping the stage three tax cuts, with Dutton having already elevated them to the status of a core promise. But this is one that younger voters would be glad to see broken. Labor has a range of options to consider to keep the cuts but amend their structure.

He goes on to refer to options for restructuring the cuts, proposed by Greg Jericho, covered in the November 4 Roundup.

The overall message from this survey, and from Hewson’s advice, is that the Albanese government should start behaving like a Labor government.

Voting intention

The graph below shows voting intention polls taken over the last month, using data from William Bowe’s Pollbludger.

Probably a graph

The average of these polls suggests that in terms of primary voting intention support for the Labor and Coalition is unchanged from last year’s election, while support for Greens has probably risen by about a percentage point. It should be noted, however, that Newspoll and Morgan, which show poor results for Labor, were taken in late November. These polls were conducted while the media was spreading the story that the government was rattled over the High Court’s ruling on indefinite detention (without drawing attention to the fact that the government and the High Court are trying to fix the Coalition’s incapacity to understand the basic principle of division of powers between Parliament and the courts.)

There are a number of calculations indicating that Labor’s TPP lead is closing, plotted on Bowe’s Bludgertrack. We should treat with caution TPP calculations based on the distribution of preferences in last year’s election because they incorporate too many assumptions and accumulations of sampling error. TPP estimates based on respondent-allocated preferences, a method that should be more reliable, suggest that Labor’s lead over the Coalition is now only about two percent.

Long term trends – Greens up, labor down, Coalition dying a slow death

William Bowe has drawn attention to a paper Gen-Z are different by Shaun Ratcliff of Accent Research, which looks at the voting patterns of different age cohorts of Australians: Silent Generation, now aged 78 or older; Baby Boomers, now aged 58 to 78; Gen X, now aged 43 to 57; Millennials, now aged 28 to 42; and Gen Z, now aged 18 to 27.

There was a time when as people aged their political allegiance reasonably reliably shifted from “left” to “right”, a phenomenon manifest in people’s political support moving to the Coalition as they aged. The ANU election study, and other research bodies, find that that no longer holds.

Ratcliff and his colleagues have dug further into the data, separating out two effects – a life-cycle effect and a cohort effect. The life-cycle effect is about changes in individuals’ preferences as they age, while the cohort effect is about how people now at a certain age vote, compared with people of the same age n years ago.

Both effects are working against the Coalition. A voter aged X now is less likely to vote for the Coalition than a voter of the same age n years ago, and is more likely than people born in earlier years to hold on to that preference to vote other than for the Coalition.

It’s only among the Silent Generation that there is, or rather has been, a life-cycle effect favouring the Coalition. Otherwise the life cycle and cohort effects combine to go against the Coalition, most strongly among Gen Z voters.

Labor, too, is disadvantaged by both effects, but far less than the Coalition. The only winners are the Greens.

Confirming earlier studies, this study picks up significant gender differences: women are far less likely to support the Coalition than men. Also Coalition support among LBGTQ+ voters is miniscule.

Interestingly the researchers find that education, as an independent variable, has little effect on people’s voting behaviour. The reason education shows a strong negative correlation with support for the Coalition is that younger Australians are more educated than older Australians.

What the voting intention polls really reveal

A glance at the graph in the previous section has one message that is easily overlooked: one third of Australians don’t want to vote Labor or Coalition. In their usual eloquent way, The Juice Media describe how the Coalition-Labor duopoly tries to halt the dangerous idea of a multi-party democracy spreading any further.

The Voice vote analysed – we’re not racists, but Dutton confused us

Anyone reading the ANU’s Detailed analysis of the 2023 Voice to Parliament Referendum and related social and political attitudes, or its summary in a press release, would be puzzled, because while the findings of people’s attitudes describe a population ready for recognition of First Nations Australians, reconciliation, truth-telling, and a voice on matters that affect them, the result was a strong “no” vote.

Similarly, anyone fearing that the “no” vote uncovered a seething mass of racism in Australia would be comforted by responses to statements put to people surveyed as part of the exercise. These are shown below, drawn from data in the report:

Probably a graph

It is notable, however, that 52 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “In the long run, it would be best for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be completely assimilated into Australian society”. But attitudes are moving: when the ANU researchers put the same statement to people in 2014 there was 65 percent agreement. Assimilationist attitudes, once seen as liberal, take a long time to die.

Regarding the demographics of voting patterns, the results confirm the bits of quick analysis done straight after the vote. Those who voted “no” were likely to have low levels of education, be male, older, have low income, and live in regions other than capital cities. (Note that most of these variables cross-correlate.)

The only surprise is that people whose language is other than English at home were likely to have voted “no”. Could it be that the concept of aboriginality is unfamiliar to those who have not grown up in “settler societies”? Unsurprisingly, researchers found that trust in social media was negatively correlated with the “yes” vote, but social media were less relied on as a source of information than traditional sources – on-line news and TV.

The survey largely dispels the idea that those who voted “no” were persuaded by the worst lies and hysteria of the “no” campaign – “they’re coming to grab your land”, “they will cancel Anzac Day”, “it’s a United Nations takeover” and other idiotic statements.

But two of Dutton’s misleading lines, about “division” and “details”, do seem to have had traction.

Two-thirds of “no” voters said that concern about dividing the country influenced their vote. Dutton tapped into the mood that no one wants to see racial division, but the referendum was about aboriginality, not race, an idea debunked 100 years ago and as meaningful as the phlogiston theory of matter. It was a cleverly deceitful move to conflate “race” with “aboriginality”. Also, the inflammatory language of the “no” campaign, in inciting division around the referendum, kept the idea of division before people’s mind. It’s a tried and tested tactic by rabble rousers.

About 30 percent of people surveyed, including 36 percent of those who voted “no” and 55 percent of those who cast an informal vote or did not vote, said they would have liked more details. Dutton’s strategy of relying on people’s lack of knowledge of the principles of constitutional government was at least partially effective.

One finding, implied rather than strongly reported in the document, is that people’s vote was correlated with their identity: if your identity was Labor and progressive you voted “yes”, if it was Liberal/National and conservative you voted “no”. Your vote was also a reflection of your affection for or hostility towards Albanese and Dutton. A general distrust in government was also a factor associated with a “no” vote.

Denkmal
Holocaust Denkmal Berlin

Perhaps with a different group on the opposition benches, concerned with engaging with public policy rather than trying to destroy the government, this identity frame would have not have arisen. Once it had arisen, perhaps many voters saw the referendum as a means to lodge a protest vote to the government, without bearing the risk of putting the Coalition back into office.

It is notable that there is 80 percent support for a truth-telling process. This goes against John Howard’s idea that we don’t want a “black-armband” view of history. We can learn from Germany that a people can confront the worst aspects of their history without diminishing pride and confidence in their country.