Election Year or Fear!

[ramAnag]

Interesting end to the Dutch election, the result of which keep rolling on.

Current state of the parties is that both the PVV and D66 have 26 seats with all but 2 "constituencies" counted. Those 2 are Venray which is late because, just after the count started, there was a fire in the fuse box at the Town Hall and an evacuation took place. Fortunately, no ballot papers got burnt. They are counting today. Venray is a solid PVV town. There are just over 31K registered voters. National turnout was 76%. Based on the results from 2 years ago, massaged with the national and regional voting patterns this time, experts expect PVV to poll between 6K and 7K votes more than D66. The current difference is 15155 in favour of D66. Venray should see that reduced by almost half.

That leaves the overseas votes. 136K eligible voters of whom 95K have voted. Historically, PVV doesn't get many votes from the expats, most of whom are well educated and in well paid jobs. The expectation is that D66 will get more votes form overseas. That should see D66 as the largest party on "votes difference". Overseas results expected Monday and will be published on Tuesday. Then the results go to the voting commission who will announce the official result next Friday. Only then can the parties start talking coalition.

Total number of votes cast might not even come into it. We have the "rest zetel", a sort of rounding up/down of the voting. We have 150 seats and it takes around 70K votes to get a seat. Once all the votes are in, each party's vote divided by 150 comes to so many point so much seats. The party with the highest value after the decimal point gets an extra seat and the one with the lowest loses one. Quite how or why I've never understood. Those who understand the system are saying that it's looking like the SP will lose a seat (currently on 3 seats) and D66 will get the "extra" one, putting them one seat ahead of PVV on 27.

Looking at the state of the polls, we'll either be back in 6 months because a workable coalition hasn't proven feasible Or we'll get an unstable coalition that won't last a year... giving us elections in '23. '25 and '26 meaning there's been no real government for 4 years. What a system.

It’s a scenario which seems increasingly apparent across the West, MA. So many countries appear so equally and intensely divided. The USA, France, Germany, Holland and, unless I’m very much mistaken, after the next election, the UK too.
Labour’s landslide last year was unusual in so much as it appeared to reflect the electorate’s massive dissatisfaction with successive Tory governments as it did approval of Labour’s policies, but we are already hugely divided, with a near equal split, between in the broadest possible terms, those on the Left and those on the Right.

Not sure how it’s come about. Insidious ownership of influential sections of the media and the undeniable ‘vox-pop’ role of the internet are certainly factors but, with the possible exception of Brexit, I cannot remember a time of such division in this country.
Where does it all lead? Who knows?

Out of interest, are you entitled to vote in the Netherlands or the UK?

[MadAmster]

Out of interest, are you entitled to vote in the Netherlands or the UK?

Short story long

Left the UK in '84, disenfranchised in '99 having lived abroad 15 years.

I wasn't allowed to vote in NL until "B" happened as I wasn't a Dutch citizen. Following "B", travelling with the family looked like being crap as we'd have to join differing queues at passport control. As I'd lived here for more than 15 years, was married to a Dutch woman , had children born here AND a clean criminal record, all I had to do was fill in a form, pay 185 Euro and I got citizenship in 2017. Since then I've been eligible to vote in NL.

In '22, the UK Election Act was passed and I've been eligible to vote in the UK as well. I have chosen not to register to vote in UK General Elections as I've not paid UK tax since the end of '85 and haven't lived there since '84. Sold my UK house in '86.