OT the downside of proprotional representation
It's the Dutch General Election next week and we use PR to allocate seats in Parliament. It will be the first time I've been able to vote in General Election here. I've done local and EU elections in the past but not the GE. There are a total of 37 parties registered for the election, however, not all of them have registered for every district. In my district we only have 34 parties registered.
We received the candidate list today, Some parties have just the 1 candidate, two parties both have 80 candidates. You can probably imagine the size of the document. It's 3 feet by 2 feet (60cm x 90cm in new money).
Prelim results expected Wednesday evening, full results some time on Thursday. The current cabinet will remain in position until the coalition negotiations have been completed which could even be next year. Political journalists, looking at the political landscape, are envisaging a coalition 5, maybe 6 different parties. The current polls show that the 4 parties of the current coalition look like getting 80 of the 150 seats. If that is so, the new cabinet could be in place within 3 or 4 weeks. Hopefully it won't take as long as the Belgians who took 296 days following the 2019 election there.