The 2019 provincial elections in the Netherlands: the Rise of Forum voor Democratie after a heavily nationalized campaign

Abstract

The 2019 provincial elections marked a spectacular victory for challenger party Forum voor Democratie and a substantial defeat for two government parties. The Liberals, led by prime minister Rutte, which had been the largest party in many recent elections, came second in a fragmenting party-political landscape. The Greens were the other opposition winner, while two opposition parties at the ideological extremes, the Socialist Party and the Freedom Party, suffered considerable losses. Regional or non-statewide parties remained a marginal phenomenon: they attained on average three percent of the votes. Further illustrating the heavily nationalized nature of the provincial elections, the campaign mainly focused on national issues such as climate change and the possible loss of the majority for the coalition parties in the Senate, which is elected by the provincial councils. The latter clearly affected turnout, which rose to over 56%, the highest turnout in provincial elections in thirty years.

Horizontal and vertical spill-over in multilevel electoral systems

“…11 The Netherlands stands in stark contrast to Japan in that national and provincial electoral arenas are strongly linked to each other. Binnema and Vollaard (2021) report that 97% of the provincial vote in 2019 was won by statewide parties that were represented in the lower chamber of parliament. In addition, the 2019 provincial elections exhibited strong second-order election effects and the combined vote share loss for the parties in national government varied from 8% to 14% across the 12 provinces (Binnema and Vollaard 2021).…”

“…Binnema and Vollaard (2021) report that 97% of the provincial vote in 2019 was won by statewide parties that were represented in the lower chamber of parliament. In addition, the 2019 provincial elections exhibited strong second-order election effects and the combined vote share loss for the parties in national government varied from 8% to 14% across the 12 provinces (Binnema and Vollaard 2021). Even though dissimilarities between 2017 national and the 2019 provincial vote are large, the extent of nationalization, i.e.…”

“…vertical top-down spillover, of provincial elections is large because voters base their provincial vote choice on cues arising out of the national electoral arena (Schakel and Dandoy 2013). Dutch voters are thought to do this because provincial assemblies elect the members of the upper chamber of parliament two months after the provincial elections and the upper chamber has veto powers over all national legislation (Binnema and Vollaard 2021). In other words, the stakes are high in provincial elections because they may establish a strong veto player in the national parliament who can significantly hamper and modify national legislation.…”