Dutch election results - right wins

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As ever with news reports about foreign elections, they tend to focus on the mainstream parties' results and the far right. The far right has been big news at least since the NF in France began its rise in the early 90s. By contrast, upswings on the far left tend to be ignored. In France in 2002 the far left candidates won 20% of the vote between them. In Germany Die Link ("The Left") was on almost 10% until recently - they were actually big news for a while. By contrast the rise of the Dutch Socialists has never really become a 'sexy' story, perhaps because Holland's new rightwing anti-immigrant politicians were better at grabbing headlines. The assassination of Pim Fortyn was obviously a very big story in 2002. Now we have the Freedom Party and another charismatic rightwing leader, Geert Wilders, who was banned from Britain a couple of years ago because of his extreme views. Now the Freedom Party has the third largest number of seats, 24, while the third party in the last parliament, the Socialists, lost ten seats, falling back to 15. Although the Christian democrats lost 20 seats, overall the right won 50% of the vote, with the rightwing Liberals now on 31 seats. Labour did pretty well for opposing further commitment to the war in Afghanistan and breaking up the Labour-Christian Democrat coalition. However they probably will not be happy with this result, and may have to form a coalition with the Liberals. The Greens gained 3 seats, meaning overall the leftwing parties got 28 seats, down from 35 in 2006. Labour got 31, down 3. The social liberals, Democrats66, gained 7 seats giving them 10 seats, a massive upswing in support.

Results
Partij Afk. Aantal % +/- Zetels
Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie VVD 1902891 20,45% +5,78% 31 +9
Partij van de Arbeid PvdA 1823542 19,60% -1,60% 30 -3
Partij voor de Vrijheid PVV 1438706 15,46% +9,57% 24 +15
Christen-Democratisch Appèl CDA 1273839 13,69% -12,82% 21 -20
Socialistische Partij SP 918150 9,87% -6,71% 15 -10
Democraten 66 D66 641529 6,89% +4,93% 10 +7
GroenLinks GrLinks 617352 6,63% +2,03% 10 +3
ChristenUnie CU 303529 3,26% -0,71% 5 -1
Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij SGP 163034 1,75% +0,19% 2 0
Partij voor de Dieren PvdD 120490 1,29% -0,53% 2 0

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