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Small fry, 10 June

Some minor points:

• The NRC has published a useful electoral map that shows which parties are largest where. It’s especially interesting to see how large the PVV is in the southern provinces, especially Limburg. Comparing the 2010 elections to the 2006 ones is also possible.
• Some research has been done on the provenance of the current PVV voters. 24% of current voters voted Balkenende in 2006! I definitely did not expect that.
  23% voted SP in 2006, and that’s closer to what I expected. According to the researcher this was mainly because Wilders was much stronger on health care than the SP, while this is a traditional SP topic.
  For much the same reason about 30% of PVV voters was between 50 and 64; and it’s likely that with them Wilders’s strong pronouncements on the inviolability of the pension age helped (you’ll remember: the breakpoint that turned out not to be a breakpoint less than 24 hours after the elections.)
  Finally, 18% of PVV voters has never voted before — and that doesn’t just mean 18-22-year-olds.
  As to the PvdA: no less than 42% of PvdA voters indicated it had voted PvdA for strategic reasons, while they’d preferred to vote SP, GL, or D66. That’s not good for the social-democrats in the long run.
  (Source: Trouw)
• Just before the elections Rutte said he wanted a new government before 1 July. I ignored that pronouncement, because it was obviously nonsense. Today, however, he repeated it, although he added it was going to be very tricky.
  Don’t believe him. It’s going to take until August or maybe even September before we have a new government.
  (Source: Trouw)
• Verhagen has been elected CDA parliamentary leader by the fraction. That does not necessarily mean he will become party leader, but it helps him in that race. The oddest thing is that the newspaper, who’ve published many speculations about the CDA leadership even before Balkenende’s resignation, never mentioned him in this position. Klink was named, Bijleveld was named, even Elco Brinkman was named, probably because he was the other CDA leader who lost 20 seats at one stroke back in 1994, but not Verhagen.
  Still, it’s not entirely incompatible with the theory I published earlier that Verhagen will become CDA vice-prime minister while Klink will become party and parliamentary leader. Verhagen will now be the main CDA negotiator in the formation. Besides, he has experience in this role: he was CDA parliamentary leader from 2002 to 2006.
  Of course it might be that the CDA will not sit in government at all. In that case Verhagen will probably remain in place and will become party leader. Whether that helps the CDA remains to be seen — it could be that by the time the next elections come around everybody’s forgotten his role in the fall of Balkenende IV.
  (Source: NRC | Trouw)
• In addition to Balkenende, CDA chairman Van Heeswijk has resigned. Probably he was on the internal shit-list, too. I must admit I know next to nothing about him, but this cannot but make the CDA internal problems bigger.
  (Source: NRC)
• As predicted, Verdonk’s ToN won zero seats in the elections. She blamed the media, which gave her too little attention. Whatever.
  In any case, in the local elections ToN won 10% of the vote in Verdonk’s home town, becoming the fourth local party, but only 1.5% in the national ones. Therefore the local ToN chapter has decided to split off from the main branch, since it’s apparent that ToN is not going to work nationally, and the local fraction has to revise its relationships.
  Verdonks says it’s a dagger in her back. Good for her. Bye bye, Rita.
  (Source: Volkskrant)

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