To make a long story short: Since 1922, Dutch adults have marched every four years to any public building in their city to put a mark for their preferred candidate with the infamous red pencil (het rode potlood). The first Dutch election under universal suffrage in 1918 was plagued by chaos caused by an explosive expansion of the party and candidate lists and the difficulty to determine people’s black mark on these long lists written in black. To organise an election in the Netherlands, red pencils are not enough.
While elections are supposed to happen every four years in March or May (depending on municipal and provincial elections), the average government has only lasted 922 days, less than 3 years. This means that the government decided to dissolve the parliament by Royal Decree, 3 months after which the new parliament must be constituted.
So why do governments usually fall? The most likely reason is a disagreement in the coalition. Due to the system of proportional representation and the general splintering of Dutch politics, parties form coalitions to create a government with the support of more than 50% of the 150 seat strong parliament. However, disagreements about policy or scandals can lead to coalition partners leaving the government and withdrawing their support.
Another, less likely possibility is that due to disagreement with their leadership, the parliamentary fraction of the governing parties loses the trust in the government. This is relevant due to the strict separation of power between the legislative and executive power in the Netherlands. Members of the cabinet are no longer part of the Dutch Parliament. As such, they need to keep the support of their own members in mind when compromising with their coalition partners.
Examples recent government falls are:
The deadline for candidates to register that they are running for office is on 6 February, or determined by the Royal Decree dissolving the current parliament. This is usually a little under 2 months before the elections. In the 2023 elections this deadline is set for 9 October. Related to this deadline is the deadline for all running political parties to register 42 days before the registration of candidates.
| Date | Event | |
|---|---|---|
| 28 August | Deadline registration political parties | |
| 9 October | Deadline registration candidate lists | |
| 8 November | Distribution of ballots | |
| 22 November | Elections | |
| 30 November | Announcement final result | |
| 6 December | Constitution of new parliament |
The Dutch Parliament is limited to 150 seats, which means that a party must receive (total votes/150) votes or 0.67% of the total vote for a single seat. Considering that participation hoovers around 80%, it is to be expected that 70,000 votes translate to a seat in parliament for the upcoming legislative period. This is called the election quota (kiesdeler).
To determine which candidate receives the much coveted seat, the placement in the party candidate list is important. The first position is called the list puller (lijsttrekker) and is reserved for the leader of that party. This position is important because during the elections, voters mark not only the party but also the candidate they support. Most votes are given to the highest places in the list.
Next to this prominence for gathering direct votes, the position is important because the total votes for the party “fill up” the list. A party with 140,000 votes (or 1.34%) would be able to send their top 2 candidates. That is to say, a political party’s votes get pooled and distributed over their leading candidates. To gather more votes, parties add list pushers (lijstduwers), often famous politicians, artists, and sporters at the very bottom of their list. These people have no intention of taking up a seat but act to push additional votes to the party to fill the list from the top down.
An exception to this is the direct mandate. Any candidate, regardless of their position, receives a seat if he reaches the preference quota (25% of the election quota or about 17,500 votes). These candidates take up a seat for their party in the parliament potentially skipping places of the candidate list.
The final calculation has to include a redistribution of the left over seats (restzetelverdeling). Since only full seats can be awarded and not all results can be perfectly divided by the voting quota, each party will have a number of votes above their awarded seats, but less than the voting quota for a full seat (between 1 and 69,999 votes). Additionally, a number of parties will not have reached the necessary quota. So not all 150 seats can be distributed.
The redistribution of left over seats is calculated by the highest average system. This means that for each party the average vote for their seats is calculated, if they would receive another left over seat. This system prioritises parties larger parties first and parties that just missed another seat second, being skewed towards parties that had a good result.
Between a small party that just missed its second seat and a large party that missed its 11th seat by more votes, the large party would receive the seat:
The small party won 1 full seat and was missing a mere 1,000 votes for their second seat. The large party won 10 full seats and was missing 5,000 votes for their 11th seat. Yet, the left over seat would be awarded to the large party, due to the resulting vote average. Both parties continue to be eligible for additional left over seats, with their new vote average.
As such the large party would beat out a third party, the smallest party, for a second left over seat. The large party would receive 2 extra seats (an additional 75,000 “extra” votes) before the smallest party would be eligible for their first extra seat (an additional 15,000 “extra” votes).
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