This seems like good news. What does veen say?
I was quite relieved to see the extreme right wing Geert Wilders not win much yesterday. A whole slew of international press had flown in to see another European country fall for populism, and they left without a good story. But after giving it some more thought, after realizing how eerily close my prediction was and after reading some of the first analyses I'm not entirely content with the results. This election result is a definitive swing to the right, towards populism. Both the Liberals and the Central Democrats were pandering to Wilders' audience with populist remarks about immigration, islam and the 'Dutch Identity' which is 'under threat'. Both parties did better than expected and together they got 52 out of the 150 seats. There's also two new small parties that came seemingly out of nowhere: the left leaning Turkish-populist 'Think' party and the Eurosceptic, conservative FvD. They both had surprisingly effective social media campaigns and got a few seats. It's not Trump-like clear-cut populism the press was hoping for. But I can't deny the increasingly populist undercurrent in our politics. The left Labour party took the fall, going from 38 down to a measily 9 seats. There's also reason for hope: the sustainable and progressive parties did really well, together almost claiming 40 seats. They did especially well among younger voters. Even the radical green party (the 'Party for the Animals', yeah really) got 5 seats with their almost extremist pro-sustainable agenda. So I'd say it's a mixed bag. Formation is going to be interesting as no party or ideology really has enough weight to form a coalition. Could've been a lot worse, though, but I will definitely be keeping an eye on what the Germans and French will vote later this year.
This is what proportional representation looks like. Every vote counts a little and the different parties have to somehow make it work together. We don't have a system like that in Canada. All small parties disappear into a might-as-well-never-have-existed status. When we do finally get there, if ever, it will be interesting.
I'm a little disappointed with the reporting that says that Rutte 'won' the election. His party, VVD, lost 8 seats and ended up with only 22% of the seats in parliament (33 seats out of 150 seats). His partner in government, PvdA, lost very badly. (Results). And Geert Wilders' party gained seats, up five to a total of 20. So I'd prefer to say that nobody won. In many European countries, no party gets even close to 50% of the seats and therefore we can't say that anybody 'won'. The Netherlands is the most extreme example of this that I've seen, where the vote is split across so many parties that the largest party has only 22% of the seats. Given that Rutte and Wilders together only have 53 out of 150 seats, it's mathematically possible to put together a government that doesn't include either. That, of course, requires finding enough common ground among enough of the other parties; and I don't know enough Dutch politics to put together a workable combination. So I'm not saying that Rutte won't be prime minister again, but I also don't like saying that say he has won before he has successufully put together a coalition agreement has been reached.
I don't understand your questions, but thanks for responding! A government needs at least half of the seats in order to get its legislation through. So there is no alternative to forming coalitions, except of course if a single party already has more than half of the seats. What is the "the system of democratic voting", and how is it different from what is being discussed in this thread?