D66 presents itself as guardian of democracy: cheering for the loss of FvD | Inland

Party leader Kaag is ‘cautiously optimistic’, she says just after half past eleven. She thinks her party can hold on to the 602 council seats it won in 2018. “In most cities we insist on retaining the number of seats from four years ago, in The Hague and Amsterdam we are doing well. It’s a very exciting evening, but tomorrow we wake up in another country. It says a lot that D66 is in good shape as a ruling party, people vote for a party that stands up against extremism.”

‘Not too hard’

Remarkably enough, the loudest cheers in the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ sounded at the metropolitan exit poll. Not because of the polled result of D66 itself, but because of the expected big loss for FvD. In advance, Jan Paternotte, D66’s party leader in the House of Representatives, had called on the approximately 350 attendees to ‘not cheer too hard’ if ‘other democratic parties’ were to lose.

The turnout in the capital was not yet clear on Wednesday evening, the turnout in Rotterdam was disappointing. “That is shocking,” says former party leader Rob Jetten, who sees how his party cannot double in a municipality like Nieuwegein, full of former Utrecht residents, while competitor GL can. He gives it a positive spin: “As a climate minister, I don’t mind that people vote green.”

Turnout ‘worrying’

Kaag also calls the low turnout ‘worrying’. In full-page advertisements, the D66 leader called on voters in recent days to vote at all to show how solid democracy still is. “But all parties must now start thinking about how this is happening,” she says. A shot across the bow at what that thinking should yield? “No, I won’t do that.”

Paternotte also sees bright spots. After the modest win and ditto applause for his party in Nieuwegein, he thinks it is good ‘that the progressive parties are winning’.

Ukraine

“These are exit polls, and we know from the past that a lot can still be moved,” says MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld, who “does not want to speculate further”. She also hoped in advance for good results ‘in the big cities, but also in smaller cities, such as in Friesland’, but said above all she had ‘the feeling’ that people have held the ballot pencil more consciously this year’ because of Ukraine.

For Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, these municipal elections were his sixth as campaign manager and also the last. “Under my successor or successor, D66 can grow from the second party in the country to the leading position,” he estimates. As a parting gift – after all those weekends in the country – D66 has a weekend away with his family in store for him. Sjoerdsma: „I think it will be the Efteling, although I am more nauseous these days. I think I will go on that decent wooden roller coaster.”

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