Hi, I am thinking of studying in Eindhoven, there is a master’s degree I really like. I have been interested in the Netherlands for quite some time since urbanists think really highly of the country. I got the news of the far-right winning the first round of the elections and that got me concerned.
I would like to know how local leftists view the change, abject terror? or “whatever” we got a robust system they won’t be able to do much harm?
You can run this thread through translate for the “local leftist” view on feddit: https://feddit.nl/post/6724682
To be frank, although the far right guy ‘won’ the election, winning just means his party got the biggest and 75% of voters didn’t vote for his party. The second biggest party is a leftist one. He managed to capture a lot of the normally way more fractured (center)right wing vote but the entirety of the (center)right wing vote didn’t grow. And as with all populist politicians he managed to capture the “I am angry so I want to vote against what’s currently happening” vote that unfortunately never results into people voting for a leftist party focusing on combating climate change. The shortsighted vote was his with blanket promises of putting Netherlands first, better hospital care, more housing and less immigration.
I honestly have no idea what it’s going to mean for the country in the near future. A lot depends on what kind of coalition he is able to form (if at all) and if he’s going to be able to push through the stuff that’s written down in his election program. Stuff like a Nexit I don’t think is plausible, stuff like a crackdown on migration is probably going to happen in some form since that was a broader theme in this election.