Lilian Marijnissen of the SP talked this week on Radio 1 about neighborhoods with many SP voters. It just didn’t help her. “No dog goes to the polls there.” Low voter turnout has long been a problem for the SP, and also for the PVV and Denk, which often have voters in the same neighbourhoods. Marijnissen said it will “only get worse”, according to her, people in poor neighborhoods have “completely lost confidence in politics”. As a listener, you didn’t get the idea that the SP itself is also ‘politics’. It was not about the quarrels and expulsions in her party.
“In GroenLinks and D66 districts,” said Marijnissen, “everyone is going to vote.”
That is not the case, says researcher Joost Smits of the Political Academy Foundation, which collects and analyzes as much data as possible about elections. During municipal elections – on March 16 – many D66 members also stay at home. And VVD members.
At the VVD, which itself investigates just about everything that has to do with voters, the analysis is that a large part of the supporters thinks that they are too busy to vote in local elections. Especially VVD voters between 30 and 55, often two-income couples with a family. The VVD now also thinks it knows what to do: go door-to-door in neighborhoods where many VVD members live, as SP members have been doing in their neighborhoods for a long time. Get out the votein campaign jargon.
“Smart”, says researcher Joost Smits. “These are free seats. You don’t have to convince new voters or make them switch parties.” According to him, the VVD has the advantage that VVD voters usually still have their voting pass. “SP members have to ring the bell much earlier, otherwise the voting passes will be gone with the old paper.”
The intention was that Mark Rutte would help VVD members throughout the country with ringing the bell. But it stayed with one Saturday, in February. He went door-to-door in the Hugo de Grootstraat in Leiden. Local VVD members had already rang the bell there in advance to say that the prime minister was coming. The fact that Rutte stood in front of a closed door at least three times after that was, according to a Leiden VVD member, due to the cameraman of news hour who was there.
Just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Rutte had one appearance for the campaign, at Jinek. After that, he was too busy, and the VVD did not think it was “appropriate” for him to hand out flyers during a war. Although you may also think that it was no longer necessary, however cynical that may be: Mark Rutte is now a statesman in times of crisis again.
At the VVD you can hear that he might even come and talk about the war on a talk show. And then “put a comma” and say: go vote.
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