Dutch voters head to socially distanced polls in election dominated by coronavirus

Dutch voters have begun casting their ballots at socially distanced polling stations in an election dominated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Drive-through voting for cars and bicycles opened on Monday in an election which will be spread over three days to allow people to vote in a Covid-safe way. The first two days are intended for vulnerable groups and the elderly, who have been given expanded options for mail-in and proxy voting, while Wednesday marks the official date of the election.

The conservative People’s Party of Freedom of Democracy (VVD), led by the Netherlands’ prime minister, Mark Rutte, is expected to win the most seats, allowing the party to form a new governing coalition and making Mr Rutte the country’s longest-serving leader, despite his government collapsing in January over a scandal about child benefits.

However, it is the coronavirus crisis, and criticism of the government’s response to it, that has been the main talking point of the contest. More than 16,000 people have died with the disease in the Netherlands, and infection numbers are rising at the fastest pace in months.

“The pandemic has played an outsized role in the election, but it’s more that it’s pacified the entire campaign,” Pepijn Bergsen, a Netherlands specialist at Chatham House, tells The Independent. “The prime minister and his party got a massive bump in the polls, the same ‘rally around the flag’ effect that has happened almost everywhere in Europe. The polls for his party have ticked down slightly over the last couple of weeks, but he’s still by far the number one.”

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However, far-right political movements are expected to continue to play a significant role in Dutch politics, with polls suggesting Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration Freedom Party will retain its place as the second-largest party in parliament. Yet Mr Wilders is unlikely to be invited to join the leading coalition because of his outspoken anti-Islam policies.

Mr Wilders told NPO Radio 1: ”We believe from a democratic point of view that the three biggest parties should at least attempt to talk to one another and govern together.”

Mr Bergsen says the topics that have worked for Mr Wilders in the past – immigration, integration and Islam – have failed to resonate with voters this time around. “It’s not really gaining traction in this debate. He still tries to link everything to immigration, but it’s just not catching on.”

Indeed, Mr Bergsen says no other political theme has been able to “push Covid from the limelight”, resulting in a campaign he describes as “sort of about nothing”.

“Even though it’s all about Rutte, it doesn’t really feel like a referendum on him, even though he has tried to make it that, because he is personally so popular.”

The Netherlands has banned gatherings of more than two people, closed restaurants and bars, and implemented its first night-time curfew since the Second World War. There are ongoing protests against the measures, which spilled over into riots earlier this year.

Mr Bergsen explains: “Basically, all the parties in the centre supported the government in its Covid response, so it’s difficult for them to really push back on that. Even the parties on the more extreme ends of the political spectrum seem to realise there is not much to gain there, because the general sense is that the government has made the best out of a difficult situation.”

The re-election of Mr Rutte represents “a continuation of the status quo”, Mr Bergsen adds. “It looks like his coalition would look very similar to the current one. He’s not campaigned on any particular vision. If anything, his entire campaign has been about him.”

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He says Mr Rutte, who is one of Europe’s longest-serving politicians, is “good at tapping into the public mood, and in that sense is not dissimilar to someone like [the German chancellor, Angela] Merkel. He is very good at monitoring how the public mood develops and is constantly consuming opinion polls and adjusting to that. He’s very good at projecting an image of a competent manager, a regular guy who’s out there doing his job for the country while riding around on his bicycle in The Hague”.

Around 13 million voters will decide the makeup of the 150-seat Dutch parliament, in an election which has seen a record 37 parties put forward candidates. Polls suggest two new parties could enter parliament with a small number of seats: the right-wing populist JA21, and the pro-European Volt.

“It’s always interesting to point out that you have three groups within the political spectrum now,” Mr Bergsen says of the political left, the centre and the far-right. “The size of the blocks doesn’t really change, but the question is where do voters move within them, because they don’t move that much between them.”