Far-right leader Geert Wilders wins Dutch election: Exit poll

True, but the generation that tends to vote far right is the boomer generation - it's the generation that failed to pass on rising prosperity and gave us the climate crisis.

It seems you are more equipped to deal with the disinformation on social media than most of us. Although I understand the desire to step away from the fray, a mind like yours is sorely needed in times like this.

Look up what Stephen harper is president of right now.

I don't think this is Russia. Its ex Canadian PM

Just to be clear liberal doesn't really make that much sense in Europe as it dose in the US. Liberals are mostly on the right side of politics while in the US it's on the left. So if you where to talk with European people then they would talk about the left or the right. In my country for instance the only party that is truly liberal is all the way to the right. The left is socialists mostly and while the US have some socialists the democrats in the US is much more to the right than most Europe "left" would be.

In this election, the "libs" are the VVD who, as a socialist (GL/PvdA) I'd hate to say but, are the most right wing reasonable party. You cannot project American political discourse and concepts on Dutch politics.

Populism never addresses the issues people have, it preys on their insecurity and creates issues.

I like your optimism, but VVD and NSC are probably going to try to work with Wilders.

Please don't confuse The Netherlands with Germany. In NL they speak Dutch ("Netherlandish"), in DE they speak Deutsch (German).

Confusing? Yes. But it is what it is.

(And don't get me started about Holland vs. The Netherlands :) )

The left isn't calling working class people bigots. We call people bigots who exhibit xenophobic behavior. If they are working class, they're being a working class bigot. The working class needs solidarity, not right wing propaganda.

So the issue is that we haven't given neoliberals enough after giving them everything?

Right it’s welfare making people poor, not corporations pocketing nearly all economic growth for the last few decades.

Only your last one seems valid. Dutch coalitions aren't very stable. The only stable factor of the last 12 years has recently left politics.

The question is indeed who is willing to form a coalition government. The most likely option is PVV (far right), VVD (neoliberal), and NSC (Christian democrats), of the latter can convince their voters they can accept the far right.

I don't know how the Dutch system works, but some time ago a pro-Russian party won like 30-40% of seats in Latvia, but every other party joined together against them. And they couldn't do shit even though they had the biggest number of seats. If it's not 50%+1 - it doesn't matter.

Asking out of ignorance, but why would no party ever be able to win a majority? Are there just too many parties to allow for one to have that much control?

First past the post - the party with the most votes 'wins'. It's in contrast to a range of other systems that rely on proportionality or preferential voting to ensure that the party or parties with majority support wins.

For example, imagine a scenario where there are 10 constituencies electing a representative by FPTP. In each of those 10 constituencies, the result is identical as follows:

• Nazi - 40%
• Liberal - 30%
• Socialist - 20%
• Conservative - 10%

Under FPTP, the Nazi would be the top candidate in every constituency, and so win 10 out of 10 seats and have total control of the legislature, even though 60% of people voted anti-Nazi. This is the system in the UK and US.

Under a proportional system, you would allocate the seats in proportion to the votes cast - so 4 for the Nazis, 3 for the Liberals, 2 for the Socialists and 1 for the Conservatives. The non-Nazis would then have a legislative majority (6 out of 10 seats) that reflects how people actually voted, and could form an anti-Nazi coalition government. This is the system in the Netherlands or Germany for example.

Under a preferential system, you still elect seats on a constituency basis, but you make sure that the winning candidate is preferred by a majority of voters in the constituency - either by having multi-round elections or by having voters rank candidates instead of just voting for one. In a simplified system, you could rule out all but the top two candidates (in this case, Nazi and Liberal), and then have a second round of votes two weeks later for voters to decide between those two candidates to represent their seat. This tends to favour more moderate candidates so it's likely under such a system that the Liberal would generally defeat the Nazi in the second round in most seats. This is the system in France.

There are also hybrid systems like Single Transferrable Vote, which simultaneously achieve proportionality and preferential voting - this is used in Ireland.

In most countries "winning" the election implies having a majority.

In coalition countries like ours, it only means becoming the biggest party.

Hence why the headline might lead people to a wrong conclusion.

Practically speaking, it's more important which potential coalition has a majority. And the parties on the right don't have a clear majority, nor do the left parties.

So it will either be a center-right or center-left coalition.

Center-right will be attempted first, since we customarily let the largest party initiate, but it will be quite difficult since we have two chambers and different parties on the right are big in different chambers.

If he fails, center-left has a clear majority in both chambers with the same parties.

Edit: need to correct a mistake. Center-left also doesn't have a clear majority in both chambers. Two of the big parties in this election have very few seats in the other chamber.

But not a problem, we often have coalitions that don't have a majority in the Senate. Our House (this election) is more decisive and the Senate more facilitating.

"Going to shit", really?

NL is one of the best countries in the world. Yes we have some challenges, e.g. stikstof or crappy goverment (e.g.toeslagenaffaire), but common, don't be soo fatalistic.

And yes, live is getting very expensive. Which is the result of the late-game capitalistic piramid scheme we live in. That sucks, sure. But that is not solvable any time soon. Especially not by NL :D

Republic, you say? King Willem-Alexander has entered the chat*

The Netherlands isn't a republic and republic basically just means "not a monarchy". Whether it's democratic or not is an entirely different matter.

Hell, North Korea is a republic. So is Finland. You can be a democracy without being a republic and a republic without being a democracy.

Yeah but they're still democratic systems.

Yeah, it would.

Odd war to pick given it led to a rise in fascism

Ban religion it will be religious groups throwing down the governement.

Limiting what structures can be built/open and where isn't oppression, it's standard government policy everywhere on earth. People can still believe whatever they want.

Only discriminatory if it favors one group over another, so ban them all.

Wow. That's actually surprising