How Geert Wilders turned all corners of Dutch
society into far right voters
The taboo of voting for populist, anti-immigration
parties is fading.
MAY 16,
2024 4:01 AM CET
BY HANNE
COKELAERE AND EVA HARTOG
POLITICO’s
reporters are speaking to voters to find out what will convince them to head to
the ballot box (or not) in the European election in June.
ROTTERDAM,
The Netherlands — Picture a far-right voter. That person is probably not an art
student.
Standing on
the curb outside the Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam, a college for media,
entertainment and technology in the center of Rotterdam, for a cigarette
between classes, young students Chess and Terence complained that The
Netherlands is receiving too many of Europe’s refugees.
Despite
their young age and trendy appearances, Chess van Leeuwen and 19-year-old
Terence Voorn, from the nearby city of Dordrecht, fear that their country is
deteriorating. The young men ping-ponged worries back and forth: Their concern
that they wouldn’t be able to leave their parents’ home; complaints of
insecurity and nuisance at Ter Apel, which houses the country’s overcrowded
reception center for asylum seekers; expensive environmental legislation; EU
rule-making, which they said was ill-adapted to their country.
“I’m not
against refugees, not at all. But if it gets too much, in times of crisis, we
have to think about ourselves,” argued 20-year-old Van Leeuwen. Regardless of
what else Geert Wilders stands for, “the Netherlands comes first for him,” he
said.
In
November, the students cast their first-ever votes for the anti-Islam,
anti-immigration, populist Freedom Party led by divisive far-right leader
Wilders. Now, the far right has formed a coalition government for the first
time in the Netherlands.
The
peroxide-blond politician, who won nearly a quarter of the Dutch parliament’s
seats in November is on track to be a part of the next government. He is
notorious for his proposals to ban the Quran and mosques, and was once dragged
to court for inciting a crowd to chant for “fewer Moroccans.”
But “that’s
in the past,” argued Van Leeuwen, pointing to Wilders’ tweeted promise that
he’d be a prime minister for all Dutch people.
Across
Europe, far right parties are advancing with support from young — and first
time — voters. Despite being one of the EU’s wealthiest countries, The
Netherlands’ shortage of affordable housing has become a key concern. Amid
rising prices, many have an increasingly cynical outlook on life. Unlike their
parents and grandparents, this generation feels less restricted by party
loyalties, making them more of a wild card and therefore an attractive pool of
new voters for anti-establishment candidates.
“The older
voter, who was still loyal, is dying; younger voters are going in all
directions,” said Josse de Voogd, a Dutch researcher who has made electoral
geography his specialty.
For
far-right parties, that presents an opportunity.
Wilders’
success took many by surprise, but it is indicative of a broader trend: The
taboo of voting for populist, anti-immigration parties is fading. In the June
EU election, the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy group is
projected to reap the electoral benefits of increasingly broad support; also
among young voters.
In
Portugal, exit polls from the March election suggested that under-30s accounted
for approximately 25 percent of those who voted for the far-right Chega party.
In France, according to a survey of voters in the first round of the 2022
presidential election, President Emmanuel Macron was only young voters’ third
choice, behind far-left France Unbowed candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the
far-right National Rally’s Marine Le Pen.
Geert Wilders’ success took many by surprise, but it
is indicative of a broader trend: The taboo on voting for populist,
anti-immigration parties is fading. |
In Belgium,
the anti-immigration Flemish Interest party has been polling above 25 percent
of the Flemish region’s vote ahead of regional, national and EU elections in
June. Researchers found Gen-Z men were particularly enthusiastic backers of the
party, with 32 percent saying they were very likely to vote for Flemish
Interest. In contrast, just 9 percent of the young women they surveyed said the
same.
Housing concerns
In The
Netherlands’ November election, Wilders collected 2.5 million votes nationwide,
more than 23 percent of votes. But if it was left up to 18-to-35-year olds to
decide, his Freedom Party would have won four more seats in the parliament,
according to Ipsos research.
Rotterdam,
The Netherlands’ second-largest city with Europe’s largest port, has a long
history of migration and boasts at least 170 different nationalities. Perhaps
counterintuitively, this is where the Freedom Party narrowly outstripped an
alliance of leftist parties, setting it apart from other cities like Amsterdam
or Utrecht, which traditionally vote left-wing.
Conversations
with the Freedom Party’s younger supporters in the city revealed some were
uneasy with Wilders’ “far too racist” views while still believing in his
ability to mitigate the growing housing crisis, which they invariably tied to
migration.
“I’m really
not racist, but when it comes to my own country, I think I should get priority
access to a house,” argued Van Leeuwen, who said house prices near the seaside,
where he grew up, run into the millions.
Voters’
frequent mentioning of housing isn’t a coincidence: Wilders’ campaign actively
tied the housing crisis to the migration debate. Still, research has shown that
migration, not housing, is PVV voters’ prime concern, said Kristof Jacobs, an
associate professor at Radboud University, who is working on a Dutch national
voters survey.
“Imagine
that the government doesn’t decrease migration, but does solve the housing
crisis — if that were possible. There’s a great chance that those voters would
still be unhappy,” because that’s not “the real problem,” he argued.
Far-right voters are not who you think they are
According
to November exit poll data, men and women, urban and rural, old and young voted
for the far-right party.
Radical
right-wing voters are all too often cast as old, white men, said De Voogd. “In
part, that’s shifting; and in part, that image has never been true,” he said.
According
to the researcher, far-right voters typically fall into three broad categories:
There are conservative voters, who previously backed Christian parties or the
liberals. Then there are voters in poorer areas, who used to vote socialist.
Then there are those who live in suburban areas, where under the pressure of
rising costs, people fear they’ll fall down the societal ladder in a sort of
“middle-class stress,” De Voogd said.
In parts of
The Netherlands, such as the northeast, the previous election — in which, due
to pandemic precautions, 70-plus voters could cast their ballot by post — revealed a generational gap between older
voters, who still backed traditional parties, and younger voters, who supported
Wilders more often. “The children of PVDA-ers [Labor Party] have become
PVV-ers,” said De Voogd, referring to the Freedom Party by its Dutch acronym.
As well as
luring voters away from other parties, the Freedom Party tapped into a major
new voter potential: Non-voters. Dutch voter analysis has shown that Wilders’
second-largest source of new votes — about 11 percent — had come from people
who had abstained in 2021.
Laminta van
Keeren, a 40-year-old entrepreneur, said a lack of trust in the politicians in
power, fears about the safety of her children, and her struggle to find a
house, meant it was time for a “totally different party.”
As a single
mother, she had no choice but to keep living with her former partner. Asylum
seekers “had all received houses … but I, who’s been living here all my life,
can’t get a house with my children,” she complained.
She was one
of the many locals in Rotterdam’s southern districts who didn’t vote in
November. But if she had made it to the ballot box, she said, her vote would
have gone to Wilders.
To make a
change, she’d support the Freedom Party and take the party’s “extreme side” in
stride, she said. While she identified as mixed race, Wilders’ extreme stance
on migration hadn’t scared her off. “Terrible, isn’t it?” she asked, saying she
really should be scared off by his stances.
It’s just
one of the conversations with Rotterdam locals that suggested that sympathy for
the far-right party went beyond blond, blue-eyed Dutchmen.
In a bar
south of the city center, one pub-goer from Aruba who lives in town, and who
asked not be identified, said some foreigners had “messed it up for the
others.”
Bartender
Astrid, who asked to be identified by her first name only, said she had voted
for Wilders because she felt asylum seekers were getting more state support
than Dutch people who’ve fallen on hard times. “There are so many people who
live on the streets,” she said.
“The
Netherlands is simply full. We have housing needs, we have needs for
everything, but we’re letting them in, and asylum seekers get their turn [for
support] before the people who live here,” she argued. When Wilders says this,
she stated, “he isn’t racist, he’s simply right.”
The
diversity of Wilders’ voter base does have limits, however: Data has disproved
that many Muslims voted for him — despite Wilders’ claims to the contrary.
Fickle voters
Wilders
managed to convince 2.5 million voters in November, and polls suggest he could
secure another win in the June EU election. But that doesn’t mean those voters
will back him in future elections.
The Freedom
Party has die-hard voters and it also won the support of a large group of
voters new to the party who are critical of migration. Experts say those voters
could decide to back another party the next time around. “That holds true for
every party, but the Freedom Party currently has very many of those voters,”
said De Voogd, adding: “Voters are volatile.”
Bodhi, an
18-year-old student at another vocational school who declined to give his last
name, backed the Freedom Party in November. He was undecided whether he’d back
Wilders again, but “I don’t know who else I would vote for either.”
The Freedom
Party has die-hard voters and it also won the support of a large group of
voters new to the party who are critical of migration. |
Wilders wants to “build more homes and close the
borders,” he said. “I think that’s harsh — maybe a bit too harsh — but I do
think we need it,” he argued.
It’s a
divisive topic at Bodhi’s vocational school, with other students saying they’d
been taken aback by the election results. Wilders wasn’t offering the “right
solutions” and his voters “hadn’t thought things through,” one said.
Like other
young voters who backed Wilders, Van Leeuwen was wobbling on his continued
support for the Freedom Party, as the politician’s demand that migration to the
country be reduced jarred with Van Leeuwen’s own concerns that the divisive
politician might take things too far.
Migration
“must go down, there needs to be a brake, it needs to be controlled,” but at
the same time, “Wilders is simply far too racist for me,” Van Leeuwen said.
“Whether you’re a doctor with seven diplomas … or a single mother working in a
McDonalds, you’re equal.”
Still, he
added, a vote for Wilders was a warning signal to politicians that it was time
to tackle migration, he explained. “Like an advisory speed sign: You can drive
100 kilometers per hour here, but 50 kilometers per hour is recommended,
otherwise you’ll go off the rails.”
Barbara
Moens contributed to this article.
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