[Nicky91]

The Rutte IV coalition of VVD, D66, CDA, and ChristenUnie will lose nine seats in the Senate after today’s Provincial Council elections, according to EenVandaag and Ipsos’ final poll before the polling stations opened on Wednesday. The poll also found that a remarkable number of voters are still undecided.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s VVD could lose its throne as the biggest party in the Eerste Kamer to both the right-wing farmers’ party BBB or the left-wing combination of PvdA/GroenLinks. According to the latest poll, the VVD could get 12 seats in the Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate. BBB stands at 13 projected seats and PvdA/GroenLinks at 14.

If this final poll comes close to the election result, the coalition will be even further away from a majority in the Eerste Kamer than after the 2019 election. Then the VVD, D66, CDA, and ChristenUnie got a joint 35 seats, already too few for a majority in the 75-seat Senate. According to the latest poll, the coalition will only have 23 seats after this election.

VVD stays stable at 12 seats. D66 drops from seven seats to 4, CDA drops from 9 to 5, and ChristenUnie from 4 to 2.

With 23 seats, the coalition would need 15 opposition seats’ support to pass anything through the Senate. It could go right-wing, working to gain support from BBB (13) and JA21 (3). Or it could look for help on the left from GroenLinks/PvdA (14) and SP (5).

According to the poll, today’s election will significantly shake up the Senate on the right wing. FvD will lose 10 of the 12 seats it won in 2019, leaving the far-right party with 2 seats. The PVV (8), BBB(13), and JA21 (3) all stand to make significant gains.

The picture on the left-wing side of the opposition is remarkably stable, EenVandaag said. PvdA/GroenLinks will get 14 seats, the same number the two parties got separately in 2019, at 8 for GroenLinks and 6 for PvdA. SP will gain one seat, going to 5, and animal party PvdD will go from 3 to 4.

The poll also showed that a remarkable number of voters were still undecided the day before the election. 43 percent of people who said they would vote did not yet know which party they would vote for. A day before the parliamentary election in 2021, 32 percent of voters were still dithering.

The many undecided voters could make the election results differ widely from the polls.

https://nltimes.nl/2023/03/15/dutch-...ters-undecided

[Nicky91]

https://nltimes.nl/2023/03/15/mornin...es-opened-late

At 10:30 a.m., the turnout for the Provincial Council election stood at 8 percent, according to research by Ipsos for broadcaster NOS. Most polling stations opened without issue. But in Almelo, half of the polling stations opened late because they didn’t have the red pencils required for filling out your ballot.

During the Provincial Council elections four years ago, the voter turnout was 7 percent at around 10:30 a.m. The total turnout in 2019 was 56 percent - higher than in previous provincial elections.

The elections got off to a bumpy start in Almelo. About half of the polling stations opened late because they didn’t have the red pencils voters use to complete their ballots or the locks for the ballot boxes, RTV Oost reported.

“There was a small logistical problem,” Rudy van der Linde, chairman of the polling stations in Almelo, told the broadcaster. The necessary equipment was distributed among polling stations last night. “That went wrong this time,” he said. The missing pencils and locks reached their destination around 8:00 a.m., and the polling stations opened around half an hour later than planned.

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[Nicky91]

The party leaders who participated in the final debate before the Provincial Council elections were trapped in the provincial house in Den Bosch for around 30 minutes after the debate on Tuesday evening. The security services considered it not safe for them to leave due to hundreds of farmers and tractors gathered outside the provincial house to protest, AD reports.

The honking of tractors could be heard throughout the debate, according to the newspaper. About 500 people stood in front of the building with flags, fireworks, and upside-down flags, a spokesperson for the provincial house said. Tractors were parked in all the streets around the building.

The security services, therefore, decided to ask the 250 people who attended the debate to wait inside the building while they cleared a path for them. “If the security people say that it is not safe to go outside, then I listen to them,” PvdD leader Esther Ouwehand said on the television program Op1 afterward. The party leaders and spectators were allowed to leave about half an hour later.

The debate
The final debate was organized by broadcaster NOS and happened on the eve of the Provincial Council and water board elections. In the debate, national politicians Mark Rutte (VVD), Jesse Klaver (GroenLinks), Thierry Baudet (FvD), Joost Eerdmans (JA21), Attje Kuiken (PvdA), Lilian Marijnissen (SP), Wopke Hoekstra (CDA), Geert Wilders (PVV), Mirjam Bikker (ChristenUnie) Esther Ouwehand (PvdD), Sigrid Kaag (D66), and Caroline van der Plas (BBB) tried to sway voters to their side.

PvdD leader Ouwehand clashed with BBB leader Van der Plas when she said that half of the land in the Netherlands was “confiscated” by livestock farming, NOS reports. Van der Plas called the use of that term polarizing. “It’s just land owned by farmers who have been farming there for years, sometimes for centuries,” she said.

The BBB leader argued for a long-term vision for space in the Netherlands. “Who needs what space in 2050?” She thinks this spacial planning should happen in “regional agreement,” with the implementation left entirely to the provinces, where agriculture has the biggest lobbying influence, as NRC recently pointed out.

D66 leader Kaag stressed that the Netherlands is in an acute crisis where the climate is concerned, and that requires immediate action. To solve the nitrogen problem, livestock must be halved, she said. The government made 24 billion euros available for farmers to stop voluntarily. But if not enough farmers volunteer, expropriation may have to be an option, she said.

Previous debates showed that Kaag’s coalition partners disagree with her on this point. The CDA and ChristeUnie, in particular, said that the target of halving nitrogen emissions by 2030 is open for discussion.

PvdA leader Kuiken clashed with FvD leader Baudet. According to Baudet, the government takes land from farmers to use it for solar panels and wind turbines in the fight against climate change, which he thinks humans have no influence on anyway. “Mr. Baudet has never seen a farmer up close. Maybe he has a pair of brown boots at home,” Kuiken snapped at him.

After the debate, she said she maybe shouldn’t have made that comparison to Nazi boots, but she stands with the content. Kuiken called Baudet a danger to democracy because he spreads conspiracy theories that result in journalists and scientists being threatened. “The party is getting smaller but no less dangerous,” the PvdA leader said.

PVV leader Wilders and Prime Minister Rutte (VVD) clashed about Netherlands residents’ waning confidence in politics and the government. According to Wilders, that is primarily Rutte’s fault. “You’ve done too much damage,” he said.

Rutte retaliated by pointing out that the country emerged from the economic crisis under his leadership. “And what have you done?” he asked Wilders. “Your positions have become more and more extreme. You are on the flanks and do not participate.”

[Nicky91]

the big winners are the farmers civilian party (BBB) of Caroline van der Plas






biggest losers are far right party Forum of Thierry Baudet, unsurprising how lately he was very positive and full of praise towards Vladimir Putin

[Nicky91]

https://www.timesunion.com/news/poli...onal-headlines


also got onto the news in Belgium and Germany, this monster win for newcomers BBB

[Nicky91]

Youtube video

also on euronews

[Nicky91]

good news for Alf (since he loves the protesters, these farmer protesters won)

Youtube video

these were protests few days before the elections

[Nicky91]

more votes continue to be counted as we speak, BBB also the most votes in the province Groningen

so far in 7 provinces the biggest party

Flevoland
Zeeland
Friesland
Drenthe
Overijssel
Limburg
Groningen

from the remaining provinces still full results to be published BBB are still in the lead too, apart from North Holland and Utrecht where respectively it is VVD and GroenLinks in the lead

[Nicky91]

85% of the votes have been counted by now

for now, the Eerste Kamer will look like

BBB
PVDA (Labour)
GroenLinks (Greens)

on a combined total of 15 seats

the win of BBB means a devastating blow for coalition government of VVD, CDA, D66, ChristenUnie this coalition government currently has 32 seats, and will go down to 24 seats, the prime minister's party VVD at 10 seats of those

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[Nicky91]

full election result: BBB most votes in all provinces!!!!!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64967513

even the bbc has a article about it