Read the full article: What does the Netherlands think about immigration and asylum?

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The great bone of contention

The Cabinet fell on it six months ago: immigration. It played a major role during the elections, as well as during the formation. This week, wide-ranging advice was issued by a government committee on the subject in essence (“Demographic developments to 2050How do we deal with immigration and asylum?

By presenting a series of statements to a sample of more than 5,500 Dutch people via Peil.nl, a good impression of the Dutch opinion on this topic can be given.

• 76% of the Dutch agree with the statement “Immigration must be reduced significantly”, 11% disagree. There are significant differences in vote choice in the 2023 House of Representatives elections. All center and center-right parties largely agree with this. Only voters from left-wing parties agree to this as a minority. But left-wing parties currently have the support of only a third of voters. The issue of “immigration and asylum” played a clear role in the decline in voter turnout over the past ten years. In 2012, nearly half of voters still voted for left-wing parties, which is now about 20 percentage points lower.

Dutch people aged 18-35 agree with this statement by 65%. Over 45, more than 80% agree. In addition, there is a clear relationship with the level of education. (People with higher education agree less than people with less education.) But the question that shows the biggest difference is whether people mainly see threats or opportunities due to changes in the past 10 years. Those who answered “threats” agreed with this statement by 90%, and those who answered “opportunities” agreed with this only by 54%.

Theses

For other data we see similar differences depending on vote choice in the 2023 House of Representatives elections. So, first just the total scores for each question:

	Approves	neutral	Disagree
Study immigration to the Netherlands should be strictly limited	64%	17%	19%
Labor migration from outside Europe must be strictly limited	70%	17%	14%
Labor migration from within Europe must be strictly limited	51%	25%	24%
The number of asylum seekers allowed to settle in the Netherlands should be reduced to zero for a number of years	52%	11%	37%
People who settle permanently in the Netherlands from outside the Netherlands must adapt to the Dutch culture.	88%	9%	3%
Asylum seekers who come from safe countries and do not have access to asylum should be deported as quickly as possible	93%	6%	1%
The reception of asylum seekers must be distributed among all municipalities	50%	11%	39%

To show the differences between voters from different parties, here is an overview of the share of voters from the four major parties in TK2023 who agree with the statements.

	Pfft	VVD	National Security Council	Bolivada/Grammel
Immigration must be reduced significantly	98%	92%	94%	38%
Study immigration to the Netherlands should be strictly limited	82%	60%	79%	47%
Labor migration from outside Europe must be strictly limited	93%	74%	83%	36%
Labor migration from within Europe must be strictly limited	74%	45%	64%	21%
The number of asylum seekers allowed to settle in the Netherlands should be reduced to zero for a number of years	89%	52%	62%	6%
People who settle permanently in the Netherlands from outside the Netherlands must adapt to the Dutch culture.	98%	93%	95%	69%
Asylum seekers who come from safe countries and do not have access to asylum should be deported as quickly as possible	99%	98%	98%	81%
The reception of asylum seekers must be distributed among all municipalities	11%	46%	39%	96%

Fuel for electoral dynamics

Among all Dutch people, 40% indicated that the Freedom Party’s positions on immigration and integration were most similar to the respondent’s positions. Among those who voted for the Freedom Party for Democracy on November 22, 38% said the Freedom Party’s position on immigration was very similar to his own. Only 44% mentioned VVD. A large proportion of VVD voters in TK2023 who mentioned PVV now indicate that they prefer PVV over VVD!

The chart below clearly shows the position of various parties on this issue.

On other issues too, a voter may believe that another party has “better positions” on that particular issue than the party they are voting for during the election. But it is clear that this issue is less important to that voter, so that the voting choice is not determined by it.

But if the issue is considered very important and people are dissatisfied with how the preferred party deals with the issue, this can become a reason for electoral shift.

This chart shows that the VVD and the NSC — the two largest parties with a relatively large amount of blue in this chart — face clear electoral risks at this point. Where does the Freedom Party get its electoral potential from?

The intense electoral movements since mid-November until now make this issue an important fuel, so to speak! The result was, among other things, the historic result of this weekend.

It is important to realize that this either changes when a government comes to power, which more or less addresses the issue as these voters want, or another topic becomes dominant. Hence, despite the similarity in attitudes to the Freedom Party in this region, people still turn to another party.

We will see how this develops in the near future.