Future prospects and the new government

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Expectations at the beginning of the government

On June 29, Peil.nl asked sixteen subjects what people expected to happen in the Netherlands with these subjects if the new government remained in power for at least two years.

There were 5 response categories: somewhat improved, somewhat improved, the same, somewhat deteriorated, somewhat deteriorated. We present the results as a mean score, with the first answer giving 5 points and the last answer 1 point. A mean value of 3.0 means that the improvements and deterioration balance each other out.

Of course, expectations do not automatically mean that this is coming from the government. Precisely because the differences between party voters show a similar pattern on all 16 issues, the dominant process in answering this question is the attitude towards the new government. Voters for the PVV and BBB parties always expect a moderate improvement and voters for D66 and PvdA//Groen Links always expect a significant deterioration.

However, the differences in the scores of the sixteen subjects are interesting.

The sixteen topics

The 16 topics are (followed by average scores from highest to lowest). 3.0 thus means that the expected improvements and deteriorations balance each other out.

• Asylum and Migration (3.3)
• Bureaucracy in Health Care (3.2)
• Safety and Crime (3.2)
• Housing shortage (3.0)
• International Security (2.9)
• Purchasing power (2.9)
• Rule of law performance (2.8)
• Care costs (2.8)
• Poverty in the Netherlands (2.8)
• Trust in Government (2.7)
• Quality of education (2.7)
• Government spending (2.5)
• CO2 emissions (2.5)
• State of Nature (2.5)
• Nitrogen emissions (2.4)
• Polarization in the Netherlands (2.3)

Below you will find a chart where you can choose any of the 16 and see the average score among voters of parties that won 5 or more seats in the November 22, 2023 elections.

It is clear how, on almost all issues, voters of the PVV and BBB have the highest expectations, while voters of D66 and PvdA/GroenLinks have the lowest expectations. (The scores vary from 1.5 to 2.0 for the 16 items.) The difference in the patterns and scores of the other four parties for each issue makes it interesting to view the different graphs.

A number of graphs are highlighted first.

Voters of the four government parties have the highest expectations regarding “asylum and immigration”.

With a “welfare bureaucracy,” the differences between the party's most optimistic and most pessimistic voters are smaller.

The graph for “Poverty in the Netherlands” looks like this:

The least anticipated topic among these sixteen is how polarization will progress in the Netherlands.

do it yourself

This is the chart, where you can choose from 16 topics: