2019-05-24

Danish Center-Left Leads in MEP Exit Polls

In what is sure to confuse the establishment in Europe and the United States, it appears the Danish center-left has won a major victory after adopting a "far-right" nationalist position on immigration.

Express UK: European elections vote: Dutch exit poll SHOCK result as PM's party finishes second
6.10am update: Does Dutch result herald a ‘social democratic revival?’

After the Dutch exit poll was released last night a number of commentators have asked whether the prospects of populist parties have been overstated.

If the poll is correct the centre-left Labour party took the most votes, with a populist party that wants the Netherlands to leave the EU coming in fourth place.

US based academic Cas Muddle commented: “Even if this is just one country, and an exit poll, it will affect the broader framing of the European Parliament elections.

“In this sense, the Dutch functioned as the first primary in the US.

“Journalists will look for ‘revival of Social Democrats’ as well as ‘rise of populism’.”

3am update: Dutch exit poll ‘rebuff for the populist right’

The Dutch exit poll results, which suggest a better than expected performance for the centre-left Labour Party, represents a blow to populist forces according to The Guardian’s Diplomatic Editor Patrick Wintour.

On Twitter he commented: “UK has no exit poll but one in Netherlands suggests Timmermans’ Labor has fared well in the Dutch EU election.

“This would, if true, be quite the rebuff for the new populist right, and for the endless articles written about its inexorable rise.”

If the poll is correct the new Forum for Democracy party, which advocates a Dutch exit from the European Union, will take three seats out of the 26 available.
This is a victory for populism or not depending on if you think staying in the EU and turning it into a nationalist body qualifies as populist or not.

From only 10 days ago: Mass Deportations Coming Soon: Danish Center-Left Ready to Expel Migrants
But it is the government policies her party has supported or failed to oppose which have been most alarming for her allies in the left-of-centre red bloc. The Social Democrats voted in favour of a law allowing jewellery to be stripped from refugees, and a burqa and niqab ban, and abstained rather than voted against a law on mandatory handshakes irrespective of religious sentiment at citizenship ceremonies, and a plan to house criminal asylum seekers on an island used for researching contagious animal diseases. In February, she backed what the DPP has branded a “paradigm shift” – a push to make repatriation, rather than integration, the goal of asylum policy.

1 comment:

  1. Good information here, and I like your charts over at Slope of Hope

    ReplyDelete