The anti-Islam, euroskeptic radical Geert Wilders is projected to be the shock winner of the Dutch election.

In a dramatic result that will stun European politics, his Freedom Party (PVV) is set to win around 35 of the 150 seats in parliament — more than double the number it secured in the 2021 election, according to exit polls.

Frans Timmermans’ Labour-Green alliance is forecast to take second place, winning 25 seats — a big jump from its current 17. Dilan Yeşilgöz, outgoing premier Mark Rutte’s successor as head of the center-right VVD, suffered heavy losses and is on course to take 24 seats, 10 fewer than before, according to the updated exit poll by Ipsos for national broadcaster NOS.

A win for Wilders will put the Netherlands on track — potentially — for a dramatic shift in direction, after Rutte’s four consecutive centrist governments. The question now, though, is whether any other parties are willing to join Wilders to form a coalition. Despite emerging as the largest party, he will lack an overall majority in parliament.

  • @michaelmrose
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    -57 months ago

    THIS IS NOT AT ALL HOW THE US WORKS

    Under FPTP, the Nazi would be the top candidate in every constituency, and so win 10 out of 10 seats and have total control of the legislature, even though 60% of people voted anti-Nazi. This is the system in the UK and US.

    This description is outrageously wrong regarding the US. Each contest is FPTP but we have many contests centered on geographic regions. Because of this the the breakdown you listed above for the 4 parties ends up with drastically different results based on how these people are distributed geographically. You could see anything from them winning virtual no seats to the majority of seats. You could NEVER win all seat

    Our senate is 2 seats per state with some states having as little as around a half a million people and some having tens of millions. Our house is nominally more democratic but its not truly exactly proportional and its subject to gerrymandering.

    It’s certainly broken enough to potentially practically provide 51% of the power to a party supported by 45% of the people but its not so bad as to provide 100% of control to someone with 40%

    • @Buddahriffic
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      27 months ago

      That hypothetical involved an evenly distributed political population, which would work that way under the US system.

      • @michaelmrose
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        07 months ago

        There has never been an evenly distributed political population in the history of the US nor is there ever more than 2 major parties in any given contest. This isn’t just happenstance. By definition any third party that grows strong enough to count pulls votes from the party they are most alike ensuring the victory of the major party that is least like the small party.

        For instance a normal race looks like 50 Republican 47 Democrat 3% split between 4 different parties. Say one party the libertarians which is aligned with Republicans in many respects gains in that singular race 6% to themselves next go round. This isn’t even enough for anyone to believe you could actually win just respectable enough for people to know you even EXIST. What happens is that you draw your votes mostly from would be Republican voters due the verisimilitude of your positions. You end up with something like

        45% Republicans 46% Democrats 6% Libertarians 3% other

        Congrats you both caused Republicans to lose ensuring the Democrat would torpedo the very positions you championed and ably demonstrated why no third party can ever get more than minor traction. This is a fundamental feature of the American political system.

    • theinspectorst
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      7 months ago

      That is exactly how the US system works, with a handful of exceptions.

      For the election of a Senator or Representative - it’s almost always FPTP. The candidate that gets the most votes wins the seat, regardless of whether or not they got a majority of the vote. The state of Georgia is an example of an exception, as they hold a runoff election for Senator if the leading candidate falls short of 50% - as happened with the elections of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both of which went to runoff.

      For the presidential election, this also how it works in the vast majority of cases. 100% of a state’s electoral college vote goes to the candidate that gets the most votes, regardless of whether or not they got a majority of the votes in the state. You have a situations like Texas in 2020 giving 38 electoral college votes to Trump and zero to Biden (versus a proportional allocation of more like 20 Trump, 17 Biden and 1 Jorgensen). That electoral college system results in situations like 1992, when Bill Clinton got a 370 vote electoral college landslide on 43% of the vote because of Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy, as well as situations like 2000 and 2016 where a Republican candidate who came 2nd in the national vote still came 1st in the electoral college by virtue of coming first past the post in enough individual states. (I believe the exceptions are Nebraska and Maine, which split their electoral college votes.)