Last week in the Netherlands the four-party coalition between the right-wing populist Party for Freedom (PVV), the centre-right VVD and NSC, and the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) fell apart after 336 days in office when PVV leader Geert Wilders withdrew his party’s support. Wilders decided on exiting the government after his demands for stricter asylum and immigration measures were not met. Shortly after the collapse of the coalition government, snap elections were set for October 29th.
It seems that Wilders’ gambit may pay off, and he may return to power this autumn, and this time, he might not need the backing of the centre-right VVD (whose leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz has ruled out entering a coalition with Wilders again).
According to a poll released on Tuesday, June 10th, commissioned by Dutch public TV news programme EenVandaag and conducted by pollster Verian, the Party for Freedom has surged to 33% from 28% on May 27th. The support for both the Green-Left-Labour alliance and VVD has gone down, from 28% to 24% and from 30% to 26% respectively. The only major party that has managed to improve in the poll is CDA, up from 18% to 20%, althought that rise is within the 2- percentage-point margin of error of the survey.
