Other party leaders had already visited the talk show Khalid & Sophiewhen it was Tuesday evening it was turn to Pieter Omtzigt. Earlier that day, he had presented the New Social Contract (NSC) program in The Hague to a room full of journalists, including foreign ones. He had spoken to them one by one with a big smile. Always with Eddy van Hijum within reach. Van Hijum is seventh on the electoral list, sat with Omtzigt for the CDA in the House of Representatives for years and wrote a large part of the NSC program.
That evening, Van Hijum also sat next to Omtzigt at Khalid Kasem’s talk show table. As agreed, other party leaders had come alone, but, Kasem said, NSC came that morning with “the demand” that Omtzigt be allowed to take someone with him. “It seems like you might need a little more support to explain the program,” said the presenter. That’s right, said Omtzigt. And he also thought it was important, he said, “to show that we did this together.”
But after the broadcast, Omtzigt was angry that he had to answer for it live. Attendees saw how he argued with editors, became emotional, raised his voice and seemed not to want to listen. Omtzigt did not seem to know that someone from his team had already heard from the editors that morning that Kasem would mention NSC’s demand during the broadcast. He strode away in anger.
Temper expectations
When Pieter Omtzigt decided this summer to participate in the November House of Representatives elections with his own party, he consistently tempered expectations. In a poll by I&O Research at that time, he had stood on 46 seats, even without a party. He could easily become the greatest in one fell swoop. He thought the pressure was too much. It may have sounded crazy, but that’s what he wanted not become the biggest, he said. “As big as possible, but not as big as possible as quickly as possible. That’s where things go wrong.”
He then referred to the LPF, which came out of nowhere with 26 seats in Parliament after the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and then quickly fell hopelessly apart. Omtzigt wanted to strive for “responsible growth”, he said this summer.
And so the NSC leader “could not completely rule out” that he would only participate in a few constituencies, and with a short list. His party said at the time that they were considering entering the elections with fifteen candidates. Omtzigt was more certain about the premiership. “I am the candidate to be party leader in the House of Representatives, to shape policy from there. The House is also the highest body.”
Different playing field
Now, ten weeks later, everything is different. There is an electoral list with 44 candidates and NSC is participating in all constituencies. And that premiership? Omtzigt is now thinking about it. He did not want to say that he does not want to become prime minister. “You will hear from me about that,” he said last week in College Tour.
NSC has been able to capture attention since its inception. First through the founding itself, which completely changed the political playing field. Then through the list, which kept him waiting. Then by the election manifesto, which also took a long time to materialize. And now Omtzigt is thinking about the premiership. If it were a strategy, it would work well. Other new parties or new party leaders have to fight for attention, NSC has been assured of this for weeks. In the coverage of the NSC election program this week, the word “finally” was used almost everywhere – as if the whole of the Netherlands was waiting for it.
But is it really a strategy? At NSC they swear not. During the College Tour election debate, Omtzigt said that he found it “great” to read political analyzes “that explain exactly” how someone means something. But in reality, “most things in The Hague are stupid things that happen.”
In any case, what may have slowed things down is Omtzigt’s indecisiveness, say people who know him well and have worked with him for a long time. He often has difficulty making decisions and procrastinates until the end. This also seems to have happened with the election manifesto. It was initially going to be presented in early October. It took more than three weeks longer.
Voters don’t seem to care much. Dutch people who said they would vote for NSC before the presentation of the program did so because of ‘the person Omtzigt’ and, unlike voters from other parties, not primarily because of the ideas of the party leader, according to the opinion. I&O Research last month.
Above average age
In any case, that potential NSC voter is above average in age, sees Asher van der Schelde, researcher at I&O Research. “55 percent of all voters are over 50 years old, at NSC this is 71 percent. A third of their voters are over 65.” Only CDA voters are older on average. NSC members also live much less often in the city. “NSC now scores 9 percent in the big three cities; less than GroenLinks-PvdA (23 percent), the VVD and the PVV (both 15 percent),” says Van der Schelde. The group also consists largely of people with a practical and secondary education.
For the 2021 House of Representatives elections, Rutte scored a 6.4. The popularity of PvdA members such as Wouter Bos and Job Cohen also decreased sharply a month before the elections. “Omtzigt has a fairly unique position,” says Van der Schelde.
What also strikes him: prospective NSC voters resemble the average Dutch voter: socio-economically more left-oriented, more conservative and right-wing on asylum and cultural themes. And NSC can attract voters from both the left and the right: a quarter of SP voters, 17 percent of PvdA members, research shows. CDA, PVV and VVD could lose 36, 15 and 11 percent of their voters respectively to NSC. And of the voters who now say they will vote for NSC, a third voted for BBB in the March Provincial Council elections.
The question is where Omtzigt stands on the political spectrum. At College Tour, he said he felt more related to Timmermans and Van der Plas on the theme of “social security”. “And when it comes to migration, I think it is a little easier to do business with the VVD.”
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Own campaign
The figures give NSC self-confidence for its own campaign, in which words such as “content” and “other” appear most often. What the party will not do: buy advertising space in newspapers, bus shelters or on television. And handing out flyers is also becoming difficult for the practical reason that NSC still has too few departments throughout the country to organize this. After all, the party is still in formation. For example, there will be a scientific bureau and there is talk about a youth organization. According to a spokesperson, 6,000 new members (at 24 euros per year) have been registered in the past ten days.
‘Different’ also refers to the not so full campaign coffers. Because the party does not accept donations above a thousand euros, it has to do without donations from, for example, wealthy entrepreneurs, which other parties do receive.
But Omtzigt also promised to be cautious about participating in debates with many party leaders, little time and many topics. Something he can afford by the way; NSC will certainly not lack attention. For example, Omtzigt will skip the NOS radio debate next Friday, to which seventeen party leaders have been invited. Instead, he gives a lecture that day about social security in Deventer. And in the weekend before the elections he stays away from the traditional Debate of the South, in Limburg. As well as GroenLinks-PvdA party leader Frans Timmermans.
The two meet on Monday for a “conversation” of one and a half hours in an Arnhem theater; enough time for more than just one-liners. The two party leaders want to talk about good governance, climate and social security. It is exactly what NSC wants: a debate on its own terms, on its own stage.
Omtzigt did drop one previous intention during this campaign. More than three years ago, in the race for the CDA party leader position, he said that he would not have his head on an election poster as party leader. “I much prefer posters that state what our ideas are. I think that is much, much more important.” The NSC posters that now hang among those of other parties contain, in addition to the party name, the name of Pieter Omtzigt. And furthermore: his photo.