Populists Appear to Fall Short in Dutch Election, Amid High Turnout
Brexit said that the Netherlands, after
Voters choose one party’s list — there are 28 parties competing —
and candidates from the list make it into Parliament based on their party’s share of the total vote.
— ALISON SMALE Mr. Wilders is unique in that he has taken advantage of a loophole
that allows him to lead a party with seats in Parliament even though, as a technical and legal matter, his "party" is an association, and is not covered by some of the Dutch and European Union law that pertains to political parties.
The son of a Moroccan father (whom Mr. Klaver says he did not know)
and an Indonesian-Dutch mother, Mr. Klaver was raised as a Catholic — a minority in this largely secular nation — and started his career with the National Coalition of Christian Trade Unions.
"The nationalist parties have won seats, compared to 2012 — Wilders’s party has gained seats, as
has a new party, the Forum for Democracy — but their electorate is stable; it has not grown.
" he said. that We’re all supposed to be Dutch — one society, one culture — and they persist in standing out,
You see the same strategy in Germany." Mr. Bovens noted
that an earlier populist movement led by the right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn won 26 seats in 2002 and that Mr. Wilders’s won 24 seats in 2010.
It’s been nonstop." — ALISSA J. RUBIN and MARLISE SIMONS Brendan Groeneveld, 30, who works in tech support in the city of Almere, east of Amsterdam, said he was supporting Mr. Wilders’s Party for Freedom primarily because of his hobby: Airsport, a gladiator-like pastime similar to paintball, but
that uses toys nearly indistinguishable from real firearms, he said.