How Geert Wilders turned all corners of Dutch society into far right voters

POLITICO’s reporters are speaking to voters to find out what will convince them to head to the ballot box (or not) in the European election in June.

ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — Picture a far-right voter. That person is probably not an art student.

Standing on the curb outside the Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam, a college for media, entertainment and technology in the center of Rotterdam, for a cigarette between classes, young students Chess and Terence complained that the Netherlands is receiving too many of Europe’s refugees.

Despite their young age and trendy appearances, Chess van Leeuwen and 19-year-old Terence Voorn, from the nearby city of Dordrecht, fear that their country is deteriorating. The young men ping-ponged worries back and forth: Their concern that they wouldn’t be able to leave their parents’ home; complaints of insecurity and nuisance at Ter Apel, which houses the country’s overcrowded reception center for asylum seekers; expensive environmental legislation; EU rule-making, which they said was ill-adapted to their country.

“I’m not against refugees, not at all. But if it gets too much, in times of crisis, we have to think about ourselves,” argued 20-year-old Van Leeuwen. Regardless of what else Geert Wilders stands for, “the Netherlands comes first for him,” he said. 

In November, the students cast their first-ever votes for the anti-Islam, anti-immigration, populist Freedom Party led by divisive far-right leader Wilders. Now, the far right has formed a coalition government for the first time in the Netherlands.

The peroxide-blond politician, who won nearly a quarter of the Dutch parliament’s seats in November is on track to be a part of the next government. He is notorious for his proposals to ban the Quran and mosques, and was once dragged to court for inciting a crowd to chant for “fewer Moroccans.” 

But “that’s in the past,” argued Van Leeuwen, pointing to Wilders’ tweeted promise that he’d be a prime minister for all Dutch people.

Across Europe, far right parties are advancing with support from young — and first time — voters. Despite being one of the EU’s wealthiest countries, the Netherlands’ shortage of affordable housing has become a key concern. Amid rising prices, many have an increasingly cynical outlook on life. Unlike their parents and grandparents, this generation feels less restricted by party loyalties, making them more of a wild card and therefore an attractive pool of new voters for anti-establishment candidates.   

“The older voter, who was still loyal, is dying; younger voters are going in all directions,” said Josse de Voogd, a Dutch researcher who has made electoral geography his specialty. 

For far-right parties, that presents an opportunity.

Wilders’ success took many by surprise, but it is indicative of a broader trend: The taboo of voting for populist, anti-immigration parties is fading. In the June EU election, the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy group is projected to reap the electoral benefits of increasingly broad support; also among young voters.

In Portugal, exit polls from the March election suggested that under-30s accounted for approximately 25 percent of those who voted for the far-right Chega party. In France, according to a survey of voters in the first round of the 2022 presidential election, President Emmanuel Macron was only young voters’ third choice, behind far-left France Unbowed candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the far-right National Rally’s Marine Le Pen. 

In Belgium, the anti-immigration Flemish Interest party has been polling above 25 percent of the Flemish region’s vote ahead of regional, national and EU elections in June. Researchers found Gen-Z men were particularly enthusiastic backers of the party, with 32 percent saying they were very likely to vote for Flemish Interest. In contrast, just 9 percent of the young women they surveyed said the same.

Housing concerns

In the Netherlands’ November election, Wilders collected 2.5 million votes nationwide, more than 23 percent of votes. But if it was left up to 18-to-35-year olds to decide, his Freedom Party would have won four more seats in the parliament, according to Ipsos research.

Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second-largest city with Europe’s largest port, has a long history of migration and boasts at least 170 different nationalities. Perhaps counterintuitively, this is where the Freedom Party narrowly outstripped an alliance of leftist parties, setting it apart from other cities like Amsterdam or Utrecht, which traditionally vote left-wing.

Conversations with the Freedom Party’s younger supporters in the city revealed some were uneasy with Wilders’ “far too racist” views while still believing in his ability to mitigate the growing housing crisis, which they invariably tied to migration.

“I’m really not racist, but when it comes to my own country, I think I should get priority access to a house,” argued Van Leeuwen, who said house prices near the seaside, where he grew up, run into the millions. 

Voters’ frequent mentioning of housing isn’t a coincidence: Wilders’ campaign actively tied the housing crisis to the migration debate. Still, research has shown that migration, not housing, is PVV voters’ prime concern, said Kristof Jacobs, an associate professor at Radboud University, who is working on a Dutch national voters survey.

“Imagine that the government doesn’t decrease migration, but does solve the housing crisis — if that were possible. There’s a great chance that those voters would still be unhappy,” because that’s not “the real problem,” he argued.

Far-right voters are not who you think they are

According to November exit poll data, men and women, urban and rural, old and young voted for the far-right party. 

Radical right-wing voters are all too often cast as old, white men, said De Voogd. “In part, that’s shifting; and in part, that image has never been true,” he said.

According to the researcher, far-right voters typically fall into three broad categories: There are conservative voters, who previously backed Christian parties or the liberals. Then there are voters in poorer areas, who used to vote socialist. Then there are those who live in suburban areas, where under the pressure of rising costs, people fear they’ll fall down the societal ladder in a sort of “middle-class stress,” De Voogd said.

In parts of the Netherlands, such as the northeast, the previous election — in which, due to pandemic precautions, 70-plus voters could cast their ballot by post —  revealed a generational gap between older voters, who still backed traditional parties, and younger voters, who supported Wilders more often. “The children of PVDA-ers [Labor Party] have become PVV-ers,” said De Voogd, referring to the Freedom Party by its Dutch acronym. 

As well as luring voters away from other parties, the Freedom Party tapped into a major new voter potential: Non-voters. Dutch voter analysis has shown that Wilders’ second-largest source of new votes — about 11 percent — had come from people who had abstained in 2021.

Laminta van Keeren, a 40-year-old entrepreneur, said a lack of trust in the politicians in power, fears about the safety of her children, and her struggle to find a house, meant it was time for a “totally different party.”

As a single mother, she had no choice but to keep living with her former partner. Asylum seekers “had all received houses … but I, who’s been living here all my life, can’t get a house with my children,” she complained.

She was one of the many locals in Rotterdam’s southern districts who didn’t vote in November. But if she had made it to the ballot box, she said, her vote would have gone to Wilders. 

To make a change, she’d support the Freedom Party and take the party’s “extreme side” in stride, she said. While she identified as mixed race, Wilders’ extreme stance on migration hadn’t scared her off. “Terrible, isn’t it?” she asked, saying she really should be scared off by his stances.

It’s just one of the conversations with Rotterdam locals that suggested that sympathy for the far-right party went beyond blond, blue-eyed Dutchmen. 

In a bar south of the city center, one pub-goer from Aruba who lives in town, and who asked not be identified, said some foreigners had “messed it up for the others.”

Bartender Astrid, who asked to be identified by her first name only, said she had voted for Wilders because she felt asylum seekers were getting more state support than Dutch people who’ve fallen on hard times. “There are so many people who live on the streets,” she said. 

“The Netherlands is simply full. We have housing needs, we have needs for everything, but we’re letting them in, and asylum seekers get their turn [for support] before the people who live here,” she argued. When Wilders says this, she stated, “he isn’t racist, he’s simply right.”

The diversity of Wilders’ voter base does have limits, however: Data has disproved that many Muslims voted for him — despite Wilders’ claims to the contrary.

Fickle voters

Wilders managed to convince 2.5 million voters in November, and polls suggest he could secure another win in the June EU election. But that doesn’t mean those voters will back him in future elections.

The Freedom Party has die-hard voters and it also won the support of a large group of voters new to the party who are critical of migration. Experts say those voters could decide to back another party the next time around. “That holds true for every party, but the Freedom Party currently has very many of those voters,” said De Voogd, adding: “Voters are volatile.”

Bodhi, an 18-year-old student at another vocational school who declined to give his last name, backed the Freedom Party in November. He was undecided whether he’d back Wilders again, but “I don’t know who else I would vote for either.”

Wilders wants to “build more homes and close the borders,” he said. “I think that’s harsh — maybe a bit too harsh — but I do think we need it,” he argued.

It’s a divisive topic at Bodhi’s vocational school, with other students saying they’d been taken aback by the election results. Wilders wasn’t offering the “right solutions” and his voters “hadn’t thought things through,” one said.

Like other young voters who backed Wilders, Van Leeuwen was wobbling on his continued support for the Freedom Party, as the politician’s demand that migration to the country be reduced jarred with Van Leeuwen’s own concerns that the divisive politician might take things too far.

Migration “must go down, there needs to be a brake, it needs to be controlled,” but at the same time, “Wilders is simply far too racist for me,” Van Leeuwen said. “Whether you’re a doctor with seven diplomas … or a single mother working in a McDonalds, you’re equal.” 

Still, he added, a vote for Wilders was a warning signal to politicians that it was time to tackle migration, he explained. “Like an advisory speed sign: You can drive 100 kilometers per hour here, but 50 kilometers per hour is recommended, otherwise you’ll go off the rails.”

Barbara Moens contributed to this article.