On October 29, the Netherlands held a snap election after the fall of the cabinet Schoof, an ill-fated experimental government between the mainstream and the radical right, spearheaded by a non-partisan MP.
In the weeks leading up to the election, tensions around immigration and government policy were running high. On September 20, a crowd gathered in a park in the centre of The Hague to protest against immigration. Some of the protestors – including different radical and extreme-right activists as well as football hooligans – marched to the Binnenhof, the historical centre of political activity in the Netherlands. They carried Dutch flags and shouted Nazi slogan; others waved the flags of Forum for Democracy (Forum voor Democratie, FVD), an extreme-right opposition party. There, the protest turned into a riot, with participants directing their violence on the party headquarters of the progressive-liberal party Democrats 66 (Democraten 66, D66), located just opposite of parliament.
The demonstration shows how important migration has become as a political issue in the Netherlands. Indeed, migration would, once again, be a dominant theme in the campaign.
D66 temporarily boarded up the broken windows of its party headquarters with signs reading “democracy will not be broken”. Throughout the campaign, the party continually emphasized the need for democratic parties to work together. During the final debates, D66-leader Rob Jetten pledged to end the era of Geert Wilders. On election night, D66 emerged as the largest party, narrowly beating Wilders’s PVV by a few thousand votes. International media were quick to comment that Dutch voters had dealt a major setback to the far right. But was that indeed the case?
Der Blogpost ist am 04.11.2025 Open Access bei WHO governs erschienen.
