The PVV is actually doing quite well in the polls. Geert Wilders’ party is competing with VVD to win the largest number of seats in the upcoming elections. It’s a neck and neck race, with VVD emerging as the biggest yet, and PVV only being allowed to call itself the biggest for one week. Wilders is advancing steadily, although he can no longer bind VVD members to his party. These mainly go to Caroline van der Plas’ JA21 and BBB, according to the I&O Research poll. It’s all about it in the Senate. There the VVD gets eleven seats in the polls, and the PVV ten (double). Wilders has a steady and permanent following, and in opinion polls he only wins seats from the Forum for Democracy.
Although things are going according to plan for PVV, Wilders’ remarks have become three and three stars. The election is approaching, and this is very evident, even if it is still four months away. It’s okay to criticize government policy, but Wilders mainly chooses a personal attack. A selection of comments/tweets from the past few weeks: Mark Rutte thinks he likes to play the big boy and brims with an infinitely big ego, FM Eric van der Burg has a dirty grin on his face and celebrity Ed Nijpels is the climate sleazy he is Pope.
The CDA member calls Hugo de Jonge a mad lunatic and then makes Hugo cry. To Wopke Hoekstra he says: Bring it on, I want you raw.
Frans Timmermans (PvdA) is a big bang bang from Brussels. Sigrid Kaag, an ISIS worshiper and lover of terrorists, and Vera Bergkamp, even on her best days, is still a thousand times worse than her predecessor, Khadija Arib. It is also remarkable how Wilders Arib, who once positioned him as a person working for the Moroccan king, is a false and unfaithful chief of the Netherlands, and now suddenly praises the heavens. He wants to stop the investigation into Areeb’s case, apparently forgetting that fellow party member Martin Bousma wholeheartedly agreed.
It’s not pretty and below any level, those personal attacks by Wilders on his teammates, but that’s allowed. Whether she was wise is another story. Now that Wilders is more than ever hoping to become the Netherlands’ top new prime minister, he will really need other parties to make that dream come true. JA21, BBB, Forum for Democracy, and the Van Haga Group, that wouldn’t be enough to get a majority backing them.
Certainly not now that Caroline van der Plas is past her peak, according to polls. Then you quickly come to the parties whose leaders were mocked by Wilders. VVD has often said that he never wanted to rule with Wilders.
But Wilders has another problem, the Forum for Democracy. The media attention Thierry Baudt has received, however negative, was directed at Geert Wilders not so long ago. But now it is in the shadows. For many years, the Freedom Party was the only party on the far right of the political centre. But a few newcomers have joined in now, with almost the same thoughts. In last year’s elections, the Forum for Democracy grew from two members to eight MPs (three of whom founded their own party after secession). A quarter of the profits came from PVV voters who believed more in the uproar Baudet had caused.
Wilders wants the return of these voters to bring his dream closer. Baudette appears to be in danger of losing some of his supporters with his deeply perverted views and conspiracy theories. In opinion polls, the party has halved from last year, and only four of the original eight seats will remain. They can go back to PVV. But the Wilders Forum shouldn’t be too difficult, partly because of the old PVV voters who went there and the ideas that go along.
Wilders believes he can continue to rage against the coalition parties. There are no voters to get it. It’s short term thinking. If Wilders wants to be prime minister, he desperately needs those parties.