The standard image of the PVV voter – angry, not highly educated, male, white, older and more popular Limburg than cosmopolitan Randstad – was shattered on Wednesday. The 2.4 million voters who helped the party to its record victory of 37 seats cannot easily be captured by these few characteristics. New research by Ipsos shows that the PVV managed to attract the most younger voters compared to the other parties: 17 percent in the 18-34 age group voted for Wilders’ party. At the previous elections that was still 7 percent. Of those with higher education, 10 percent voted for the PVV – so in absolute numbers more highly educated people voted for PVV than for D66. The party won in the countryside, but also in the city. The male/female ratio is 53 compared to 47. At competitor VVD it is 60/40. And the PVV is also increasingly able to find substantial groups with a migrant background.
A closer introduction to the PVV electorate in 2023, based on three new voter types and one familiar one.
1. Choosing virgins
In café Klein Berlin, near Apeldoorn station, a group of colleagues are just finishing lunch this Thursday. Naturally, the House of Representatives elections are also a topic of discussion. “Our eldest son,” says one woman, “talks about us with everything. But now he suddenly said: I’m going to vote PVV. I didn’t see that coming.”
But, her son told her, “everyone” around him would vote for Wilders.
On the other side of the tracks, at MBO Aventus, many students say they voted PVV last Wednesday. “PVV, FVD and VVD came from my voting guide,” says technology student Luuk Zwiers (18). “But I thought Baudet was crazy in his statements. He does a nice job in a YouTube video, but I didn’t want to vote for that. Wilders is clear in his views, but is politically correct in how he expresses himself.” What appeals to him? “That the Netherlands comes first to him.” He receives support from his friend Kwint Rab, also 18. “It is time for the migration policy to be tightened. We also want to leave the house soon and get our own rental property. That is now virtually impossible.”
The fact that Wilders is considered “politically correct” among these young voters shows that so-called ‘electoral virgins’, a Dutch synonym for first-time voters, Wilders and his party without the prior knowledge of seventeen years of PVV. Then anti-Islam film Fitna (2008) caused great commotion among Muslim fellow citizens, they were still toddlers. Wilders’ reputation as a firebrand of the ‘fake parliament’ is only known from hearsay.
What is also striking is the role that voting guides play among young voters, who took their concerns about affordable housing, inflation and their student loans into account when completing these decision aids. The voting guide also clearly showed PVV among three friends who were chatting in front of the entrance to the school. One of them nevertheless says that he did not vote for the PVV, but for Denk. “I was born in the Netherlands, but of Turkish descent.”
That almost the entire schoolyard seems to consist of PVV voters: she understands it, “in terms of positions”. But it also scares her. “He does talk about my faith, my origins, about who I am. I fear that.”
Yet not all Dutch people with a migration background are so fearful.
2. New generation of Muslims
Mehmet Çavuş is 21 years old and is in the first year of an MBO course for elderly care in Deventer. His mother was born in the Netherlands, his father in Turkey. He goes to the mosque less often than before, once a week.
He voted for the PVV for the first time in 2021, in the middle of corona times. “At that time of lockdowns, Wilders was one of the few to resist government command. He wanted us to keep our freedom. Baudet did that too, but I didn’t take him seriously.”
Now Çavuş’s vote did not automatically go to Wilders again. “I read some things on the internet, filled out a voting guide, watched a few election debates.” He hesitated between Pieter Omtzigt and Geert Wilders. Çavuş moved to the PVV while watching the SBS6 debate. “I thought Wilders was right, for example when he told Frans Timmermans that he would receive 15,000 euros in redundancy pay, while a lady said in that broadcast that she could not even pay her deductible.” Partly because of this, it was Wilders for Çavuş again on Wednesday.
PVV politicians regularly point out that migrants also vote for their party, including those of Turkish and Moroccan descent. Voter survey confirms that. But the vast majority are migrants from outside the Islamic world, such as Dutch people of Asian descent (India, China). The much smaller group of voters of Turkish and (to a lesser extent) Moroccan origin mainly concerns the young, somewhat secularized second and third generations, such as those of Çavuş. In addition, the party has had a substantial following among Surinamese Hindustani for a long time; among them, and among Indian Hindus, anti-Islamic sentiment may play a role. Moreover, competition in the labor market is a determining factor, but also crime and deteriorating neighborhoods, it appears research.
Of course, Wilders also has negatives, says Çavuş, such as his harsh rejection of Islam. “But I don’t believe that Wilders will soon close mosques. Other parties really don’t let that happen. You will have a civil war if he continues.” Many of Çavuş’s friends are afraid, he concludes. “They say to me: if something happens to our mosque, it will be your fault. Ridiculous of course. As if my vote would make any difference among those other 2 million voters!”
3. Switchers
He usually voted for the VVD, but on Wednesday he decided to switch to the PVV. Pensioner Tiny van den Boogaard (70) from Elsendorp in Brabant had been considering PVV for some time, for example because of its positions on immigration and healthcare. “But I thought Wilders talked a little too strangely, about the fake parliament and so on.” When Prime Minister Rutte announced his departure in July, and Wilders also started acting a little less “weird”, the switch was a fact. Van den Boogaard will not be very active in spreading the name of his new found love, “but if I am asked about it, I will just say it.”
About 15 percent of PVV voters on Wednesday came from the VVD. Frustrations that had been pent up for a long time found an outlet: about Europe not solving the migration problem, about rising costs, about the changing street scene. Or, as one voter put it summarized to RTL: “Who in this country still dares to wear a yarmulke in public?”
What also played a role for the retired Van den Boogaard: for a long time a vote for Wilders was “a wasted vote,” he says. “Because the other parties are boycotting him anyway. Now there is a much greater chance that there will be a cabinet with the PVV and Wilders will become prime minister. Wilders will not do as well as Rutte did. But that may yet come.”
4. Old faithful
In addition to new voter groups, Wilders also managed to persuade his core electorate to vote. People like Paul Halbach (65) from PVV stronghold Kerkrade. He voted for the party for the first time in 2017, and it already felt like a kind of coming home after a long search since the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2002. “Since then I had completely lost my confidence in politics, but Wilders has given me that give back,” says Halbach, who has often not voted since 2002.
He meets all the familiar characteristics of the PVV voter: a white man, a bit older (65), living in an apartment with single glazing, who has been excluded from the labor market since he developed a tumor, and concerned about his social security. “Most politicians are actors, who mainly try to keep their jobs with nice words, like Mr. Rutte,” he says. “But Wilders sees us, will walk through fire for us, and has had the same message for about seventeen years. And in what kind of situation, as secured as it needs to be. You’ll never be able to do that if you’re an actor and you don’t actually believe in what you’re saying, right? Then you must mean it!”
Lucas Hartong (60) was there when the PVV was founded in 2006. “I was part of the very first campaign.” The former LPF member saw many similarities between the positions of Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders, especially when it came to their criticism of Islam. From 2010 to 2014 he sat in the European Parliament on behalf of the PVV. where he left after an argument. He did not agree with the cooperation with FPÖ and Front National. To his regret, Hartong subsequently noticed that the PVV past stood in the way of his administrative ambitions. He applied for mayor several times, but each time received zero. petition: “I put my whole soul into my work as a MEP, but felt that I got little in return.”
The PVV fire continued to burn at a low level for the theologian who occasionally leads an evangelical congregation in Goeree-Overflakkee. Last Wednesday’s victory was something he “always hoped for”, but which he no longer expected. And now he advocates a right-wing cabinet. “I said to Omtzigt years ago: Pieter, it would be great if you and Wilders could do something for the country together. Now that scenario may come true.”
If the PVV enters the cabinet, Hartong is prepared to give the party a new chance. “I don’t expect Wilders to call me for a post in a cabinet,” says the veteran. “But if he calls, I won’t say no.”