PvdA is not in a good position: Working class is walking away and party ‘loses image’ | Formation 2023

At the last House of Representatives elections, in November 2023, there was “a clear underrepresentation of the working class” among the people who voted for the GL-PvdA list connection.

This is evident from an analysis from the National Voter Survey (NKO) published on the political blog on Wednesday Piece of Red Meat appeared.

GL-PvdA is now mainly associated with climate by voters. This seems to make the bottom disappear under the PvdA, the party that was founded for the working class. “We see a gradual erosion process,” says Kristof Jacobs, associate professor at Radboud University and co-author of the NKO.

Jacobs sees something special happening among the PvdA electorate, he says. “Voters always associated social security with the PvdA, but NSC has managed to squeeze in.” Pieter Omtzigt’s party has managed to claim that issue, which traditionally belonged to the Social Democrats. The only question is for how long, Jacobs emphasizes. After all, NSC still has to prove itself as a new party.

The trend that ‘the working class’ – a label that voters attach to themselves – is slowly turning their back on the PvdA has been going on for some time, the NKO researchers see. In 2010, the PVV was the largest party among workers. Since 1971, the PvdA has always attracted the most voters from that group.

This shift became very clear in the last elections. Nearly a third of people who consider themselves working class voted for Geert Wilders’ party.

To win back those voters, the PvdA can choose to move to the right. This happened, for example, in Denmark with the Social Democrats, who were successful with a strict immigration and refugee policy. But that also has disadvantages, says Jacobs. “Whatever the party gains on the right, it loses on the left.”

Former PvdA leader Lodewijk Asscher has tried to stimulate this discussion in his party. But there was no other (stricter) migration course.

Where the PvdA scored well in 2021 was on the subject of housing. The party had successfully mastered that theme. Also by opposing the VVD. “Parties such as the VVD and D66 choose to demolish and sell social housing en masse,” said then PvdA MP Henk Nijboer.

Remarkably, in the last elections the VVD scored better on this than GL-PvdA. “Living has been redefined with ‘building, building, building’,” says Jacobs. He quotes the now well-known slogan in The Hague from former VVD MP Daniel Koerhuis, who was happy to repeat this sentence wherever he went.

From a purely numerical perspective, you can see the faction merger as successful. GroenLinks and the PvdA won more votes in the last national elections than the previous time. Yet there is also a ‘but’ to this. Because the party received many strategic votes from voters who had first voted for D66 or Volt. “A strategic vote is very fleeting,” says Jacobs.

Moreover, although the new party leader Frans Timmermans is popular among his own supporters, he scores very poorly outside of it. Figures from the NKO show that 15 percent of voters give him a 0 on a scale of 0 to 10. “The average sympathy for party leader Frans Timmermans was relatively low,” the researchers conclude with some sense of understatement.

The theme of social security has been claimed by the NSC, the working class is mainly with the PVV, a large part of the election profit is only the result of strategic votes and Timmermans is not doing well outside his own circle – all in all, the party is not in a good position for. Jacobs: “The signals are not green.”

Yet there are still opportunities for the party, the associate professor thinks. For example, employment was not an important theme in this campaign. The PvdA has traditionally scored well on that subject. “That theme could return when the economy cools down,” says Jacobs.

As opposition leader, GL-PvdA could also benefit from a right-wing cabinet of PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB. “Who knows, they might be able to claim the theme of social security again,” says Jacobs.

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