On a music venue in Leiden, in front of a huge Dutch flag, the words of D66 party leader Rob Jetten also seem a bit big. “I want to beat Wilders,” he says to a lyrical audience on October 18, almost two weeks before the elections. “Call me ambitious, call me too optimistic, but I know for sure: It is possible.”
It was a conscious move, says D66 campaign leader Robert van Asten afterwards. At that time, D66 is still far below the PVV in the polls, and also below the CDA and GroenLinks-PvdA. But after the first RTL debate, where Jetten can stand in for Wilders, D66 suddenly increased from 14 to 18 seats, according to research agency Ipsos I&O.
The D66 campaign team feels strengthened, sees resignation from other parties, and wants to plant a new idea in the minds of voters. The final of The Smartest Person Jetten doesn’t win that Saturday evening, but the elections – why not? Van Asten: “With that rally we wanted to show: beating Wilders, it is possible.”
On the same pop stage in Leiden, Jetten is this week as the surprising winner of the elections – which was confirmed on Friday by the latest counts. With a fabulous final sprint, the D66 members have achieved their best election results ever: at least 26 seats. The middle party managed to convince voters who previously voted GroenLinks-PvdA, but also supporters of the VVD and NSC, even of the PVV and BBB. And importantly: without alienating its own supporters.
To what does D66 owe this success? A look back at a strategic and optimistic campaign, with some luck, and with risks because D66 significantly expanded its social-liberal identity.
Floating right
A good campaign starts with telling your own story in time, says former VVD campaign strategist Bas Erlings. And D66 had that, in his eyes. “When the Schoof cabinet fell in June, the party was ready. Even then, the party radiated positivity.” Jetten was looking forward to the elections, he told the media that day. “Here in The Hague we are longing for people who want to work together on solutions.”
During the period of opposition, D66 took the time to slowly but surely change course. After the disastrous 2023 House of Representatives elections, in which the party dropped from 24 to 9 seats, the D66 scientific bureau concludes that the party must be less pedantic, less elitist and less technocratic.
Poaching left-progressive voters from the new merger party GroenLinks-PvdA will be difficult, D66 estimates. Strategically, there appear to be opportunities to attract VVD voters. That party has shifted further to the right under Dilan Yesilgöz, and in the cabinet with the PVV. So there must be a new D66 story that can also appeal to right-wing floating voters.
From then on, Jetten, who previously embraced the label of ‘climate pusher’, speaks about ‘right-wing’ themes such as the stalled government, regulatory pressure and the economy. He places less emphasis on climate problems and focuses more on daily concerns: the housing shortage and pressure on healthcare. He also sounds stricter about nuisance surrounding asylum and insists on European migration agreements.
This change of course does not result in more seats in the polls: at the end of the summer, D66 is still fluctuating at eleven seats. According to Erlings, this is because D66 is unable to adjust and dominate the political debate in The Hague and the social debate.
Optimism
The change in course of D66 also includes a change in tone. “We didn’t want to explain how it doesn’t work, but say how it can be done,” says campaign leader Van Asten. Hence the campaign slogan ‘It is possible’, simply copied from the ‘Yes we can‘ by Barack Obama.
Voters need a positive story after ‘the standstill’ and the rumblings under the Schoof cabinet, the party sees in surveys. The message from D66 should be: “We put our shoulders to the wheel, we will succeed, we have done that before in the Netherlands,” says Van Asten. That is why Jetten regularly talks about the Delta Works, the Afsluitdijk and the Flevopolders. “To show: look, we can do that.” The plan to build ten new cities also serves as a metaphor. The question is whether it will happen, but D66 dares to dream again.
D66 stands out as the only party with such a distinctly optimistic story, says Erlings. Take the campaign spots on TV with Jetten in a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, among the people. It had Ruttian features, says the former advisor to former Prime Minister Mark Rutte. “Many voters cite Jetten’s optimism,” says pollster Peter Kanne of Ipsos I&O, “as a reason for their choice for D66. The decisiveness he radiates, the constructive attitude.”
You can even see it in Jetten’s body language and expression in the final debate of the NOS. With his back straight and his chest puffed out, he debates in full sentences that are rehearsed yet powerful.
Job Jetten during a campaign rally in Leiden.
Photo Lina Selganp / ANP
With that optimism, the cosmopolitan and pro-European D66 also opts for a daring story about being proud of the Netherlands. This includes Dutch flags at party meetings: more and more and bigger – almost like a provocative caricature for the liberal supporters.
That Dutch flag, said Rob Jetten in an interview with NRChad been hijacked by the extreme right. Why shouldn’t D66 wave this – and thus respond to Dutch sentiment among voters? D66 succeeds without being accused of opportunism or ending up in the right-wing corner itself. After an attack on the party office during the far-right riots in The Hague in September, Jetten D66 can profile itself as a party that stands up against anti-democratic forces.
‘Bad apples’
According to Erlings, it is also strategically smart that D66 itself opens the conversation about asylum and migration. In this way, D66 can tie in with an important election theme and the party becomes a more realistic option for right-wing voters. In order to recognize “the concerns of Dutch people”, it is also important to name them, they think at D66. That’s why Jetten talks about ‘aso’s’ who cause nuisance and ruin it for others. At the RTL debate and News hour he speaks of “bad apples”.
Journalist Tim Hofman questions Jetten in a podcast of the online program ANGRY about that language. Isn’t the D66 leader contributing to the dehumanization of migrants and refugees?
It is necessary to make progressive politics great, Jetten argues. Left-wing and progressive politicians will continue to lose elections if they do not campaign differently, he says. “We are the best boy in the class, but the biggest rioter in the schoolyard is now spitting in everyone’s mouth.”
Jetten wants to talk about “dots on the horizon” instead of “resources and policy,” he says. And he wants to be “clearer and more articulate” in his language. The goal is for people to be able toto bewitch” for a “more progressive, freer and greener Netherlands.”
At the beginning of October, the D66 campaign started to gain electoral traction. For the first time, the party has clearly more seats in the Peilingwijzer, the weighted average of Ipsos I&O and Verian. Voters appreciate that Jetten has become “more in the middle”, the report shows. Both VVD members who think their own party has become too conservative, and GroenLinks members who find Jetten “more rational” than Timmermans.
At the party conference in Den Bosch at the beginning of October, Jetten appears looser for the first time. In his speech he compliments GroenLinks-PvdA and CDA, he jokes about his sister who is with us and normally only comes to the Brabanthallen for parties.
In Den Bosch, Jetten speaks of “excessive individualization” and “sense of community” – atypical for D66. He even borrows the words from the successful BBB campaign for the 2023 Provincial Council elections: mienskip and parenthood.
Jetten also has a few windfalls during the campaign. One of these is Henri Bontenbal’s slip News hour about homosexual students in Christian schools on October 20. Until then, the CDA party leader seems to be the favorite of many voters, but they drop out because he seems to put educational freedom above empathy. “The CDA and D66 have already maneuvered so close together that a switch from CDA to D66 is no longer that difficult,” says pollster Kanne.
The smartest person
Jetten’s participation The Smartest Person Of course it also helps him, Kanne and Erlings think – although this is difficult to see in polls. Jetten participates in the final week of the TV program and can casually tell something nice about himself in each episode. “Rob, what is the most exciting thing you have ever eaten,” asks presenter Herman van der Zandt, for example. “Goat brains,” says Jetten. And he comes up with an anecdote about a barbecue with his Argentinian in-laws.
The finale episode has almost two million views. Kanne: “This way voters get to know him and sympathy can grow.” Partly because of that television program, Rob Jetten has been on television the most, according to a Political Screen Time Counter The Green Amsterdammer.
Money has not been an unimportant factor in D66’s campaign. According to the website Politieadministratie.nl, D66 had by far the largest campaign budget, of almost two million euros. The party produces two podcasts and documents Jetten’s tour through the Netherlands to engage with voters who do not vote for him for videos on social media. The party has a young team for TikTok and webcare, which answers questions from floating voters until the results evening in the Nobel music venue.
In the run-up to election day, D66 is growing towards the other larger parties in the polls, and the party is even on par. And because D66 is now the same size as GroenLinks-PvdA, strategic voting for progressive voters has become more complicated: who do you want to help become the biggest? In those last 48 hours, many voters switch to D66, sees pollster Kanne. GroenLinks-PvdA has not been growing in the polls for some time now, they are disappointed in Timmermans, and Jetten impressed in the last party leader debates with sharp attacks on Geert Wilders.
In this way, D66 attracts many voters at the last minute: a third decide to vote for D66 in the last week, 18 percent on the day before the elections. Erlings: “That was the moment in the campaign when it was mainly about energy, who showed himself to be a strong leader.”
By winning the elections, partly thanks to many right-wing voters, D66 has also placed itself in a dilemma. This new voter group is connected to D66’s change of course and expects action – also in the areas of asylum and migration, for example. That voter group will have fewer objections than D66 itself to a coalition with the far-right JA21. While Jetten prefers a cabinet with CDA, VVD and GroenLinks-PvdA.
Just as in the campaign, D66 as a government party will have to continue to balance to keep voters on the left and right satisfied.
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