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SP and PVV research

Ipsos, which also polls for the Politieke Barometer, has released a paper on SP and PVV voters. The main conclusion is that no less than 7% of Dutch voters are willing to vote for both SP and PVV, while about a quarter of them is willing to vote SP but not PVV, and about the same amount PVV but not SP.

Although this is powerful evidence for the existence of the PVV-to-SP right-to-left conduit, the main conclusion remains that Dutch voters remain faithful to their own block, and that the 7% that hesitate between SP and PVV are very much the exception to the rule.

In general, the 7% consist of women more than men, younger voters more than older, lower-educated ones more than middle- or high, they are politically centrist, and they value SP leader Roemer higher than PVV leader Wilders. (That last bit is a general trend across even block lines right now; don’t read too much in it.)

Ipsos gives the following comparison table with the percentage of SP and PVV voters that also consider another party. Unfortunately it’s not quite clear whether they mean 2010 SP and PVV voters or polled people who currently prefer those parties. I’m guessing the latter.

In general SP voters are left-block, and PVV voters right-block. That’s not much of a surprise, but it’s good to see it confirmed once more, especially since sometimes opinion articles seem to think the two kinds of voters are completely interchangeable.

PVV voters hesitate between 2.3 parties on average; SP voters between 2.7 parties. Since the left block has one more party than the right block, this seems natural.

Still, 40% of the PVV voters see the VVD as a possibility, against only 14% for the CDA. This is quite a difference, and it’s not really repeated on the left. There, 43% of SP voters see the PvdA as a possibility, and GL and D66 also score quite decently.

About 15% of the voters for both parties consider the other party, which works out to roughly 7% of the total electorate. Still, take a look at the 50Plus and PvdD numbers: they’re barely less. This is good news for especially small protest party 50Plus. Sure, sympathy doesn’t mean actual votes, especially not once strategic voting starts to be factored in, but it still means these two parties may attract a decent amount of protest voters.

The oft-repeated theory that most PVV voters are disappointed PvdA voters is just not true: only 13% of PVV voters is considering the social-democrats. The PvdA scores higher than GL or D66, but that doesn’t really say a lot.

So the voter conduit between the extreme left and the extreme right exists and is worth roughly 10 seats. Currently the SP is profiting from this, but that could just as well change with the next polls.

<— Political preference research | Party profile — 50Plus —>

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