“Are we looking forward to it?” Henri Bontenbal shouts across the market in the center of Den Bosch. A large group of CDA members, in green jackets and green scarves with the party logo on them, cheers. Bontenbal is given a crate of sausage rolls in his hands, which he can hand out. He wraps them in CDA leaflets with his own face on them. In less than an hour, five crates and a multitude of selfies with Fur ball through.
But behind the cheerful cheerfulness, there are also concerns among CDA members four days before the elections. In two consecutive polls, both by Maurice de Hond (Friday) and Ipsos I&O (Saturday), the Christian Democrats see their party sinking. And because a large proportion of voters are still undecided between parties, the loss could continue. Voters at Ipsos I&O give a clear reason for this: Henri Bontenbal’s views on the freedom of education.
The CDA leader defended this week News hour Article 23, the article of law that guarantees, among other things, religious education. In the TV program he was shown a fragment of a former student of a reformed school who talked about how oppressive it was to be homosexual at a school that rejected it.
Bontenbal had shown little empathy after that. He had argued that religious education could conflict with the principle of equality. And he had said: “A student can also go to another school.”
He joined later Today Inside back: he thought he had been too technocratic. He shifted his message from defending Article 23 to the obligation for schools to provide a safe environment for students.
“I am a human being, I expressed myself unhappily and I have come back to it,” Bontenbal said on Saturday in Den Bosch. NRC. And if he could have done it again at News hourthen, he says, he would have “expressed himself more carefully.” But that doesn’t seem enough for people who were considering voting for the CDA.
CDA was campaigning in Den Bosch on Saturday.
Photo Robin Utrecht / ANP
Voter research by Ipsos I&O shows this Saturday that 78 percent of voters disagree with the statement that religious schools should retain the freedom to teach children that as a gay person you are not allowed to have a partner. This is 80 percent of voters who say they will vote for CDA. The Christian Democrats will lose virtual seats to the non-denominational parties D66, VVD and GroenLinks-PvdA.
Win and lose
Until Bontenbal’s appearance on Nieuwsuur, the CDA controlled its own campaign. The party was doing well, with a big plus in the polls and Henri Bontenbal as the most appreciated party leader.
This seems to be turning around at the tail end of the campaign: Bontenbal can no longer tell his own story, he has to explain, justify himself again and again and also say again and again that he News hour should have done differently. On Friday evening Bontenbal was on the TV program Café Kockelmann with Frans Timmermans of GroenLinks-PvdA and Dilan Yesilgöz of the VVD, the two party leaders to whom some of his voters now say they want to defect. They want to modernize Article 23 and expressed their incomprehension that Bontenbal does not want to change the article of law. The CDA member had to defend himself again.
The virtual success of the CDA in the polls posed a risk from the start: of all parties, the CDA was the most appreciated because of its party leader, according to figures from Ipsos I&O. He was seen as decent and connecting. The fact that the Christian Democratic story also contains conservatism seems to be only now dawning on some of those potential voters.
In Den Bosch Bontenbal says no NRC that he remains “optimistic”, even after the declining polls. “And if we end up with twenty seats, I think that’s fantastic.” Even if the CDA does not become the largest? “We never set out to be the biggest, we wanted to bring the best version of ourselves to the table.”
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