First and foremost: in no way does the poll satisfy any scientific criteria - there is no careful sample. After our call the majority of voters seems to have come in for the poll on Facebook, which may account for a slight overrepresentation of students (81%). What is clear is that nobody from the same IP address has often voted for the same party, although some addresses have been used several times by apparently different persons.

If it is up to the TU/e students and employees who have filled out the election poll, D66 will with 41 seats be the biggest party in the Lower House after this election. Followed in the joint second place by VVD and GroenLinks with 29 seats each. Ranking in fourth place is the PVV with 8 seats, followed closely by PvdA and CDA (7 each). The Piratenpartij, not in the Lower House today, scores remarkably well and could delegate 6 people.

A total of 326 people took the trouble to participate in the poll, including 27 members of the academic staff. The picture from the academic staff is markedly different from that among the students: GroenLinks is there given one third of the votes, followed by VVD (one fourth) and D66 (15 percent). Among the support staff the PvdA, VVD and GroenLinks head the charts jointly.

Quite willing, but not allowed

She would very much like to vote, but cannot. Claire Vereecken, team leader front office IEC, lives in the Netherlands, but has the Belgian nationality. GroenLinks would get her vote.

Quite emphatically she says: “I am left-wing, am very much into nature and animals and find the environment important.” She also considers the reception of migrants to be important and is a volunteer for the Dutch Council for Refugees. “I teach Dutch to a Syrian family in my village of Schijndel. A father, a mother and eight children in the age bracket from 4 to 19, so a full class altogether.” Vereecken is anti-Wilders, anti extreme right-wing and anti-meat. “I am a vegetarian for the animals and for the environment, not for my own body.”

She often has discussions about ‘left-wing matters’. “I have even been de-friended on Facebook several times already. I overwhelm people with posts about anything to do with animal or human rights or anti-Trump. It is not always accepted from me gratefully, but I will keep doing this.”

If she were younger than the 55 years old she is today, she would definitely go and protest against all kinds of things. “I used to do that a lot in Brussels when I was between 16 and 25, against dictator Franco, against nuclear energy.” Strongly politically conscious, then, but unfortunately not entitled to vote here.

On March 15 the Dutch will elect the members for the Tweede Kamer (Lower House or parliament), which numbers 150 members. Below we give a brief explanation for international staff members and students who cannot vote, but are interested in the Dutch political system nevertheless.

Elections to the Lower House are held every four years, unless it is decided to call early elections - which is usually due to discord between the various parties that jointly form the government.In contrast to some neighboring countries, there is one list of candidates for the whole nation: members of parliament are not elected per district, then. Seats are divided on the basis of proportional representation. Everybody who is eighteen or older and has the Dutch nationality can cast their votes for one person on the list of candidates, which list is divided into candidates from different political parties. For the coming elections there are no less than 28 parties. Due to the absence of an electoral threshold, small parties in the Netherlands also stand a fair chance of securing one or more seats. In consequence, today’s Lower House has representatives from eleven elected parties, plus six parties that have arisen due to interim secessions. The votes cast are counted both per person and per political party. Candidates that are too low in the list to be elected to parliament on the basis of their position, can still claim a seat when a sufficient number of voters have voted for them personally to attain the electoral quota (1/150th of the total votes cast). Further, it is not unusual to put widely known public figures as popular candidates at the bottom of the party list. At present the political landscape in the Netherlands is so fragmented that it will probably take four or more parties to form a government with a majority in the Lower House. The biggest parties in the polls are on the right-hand side of the political spectrum. Although the right-wing populist PVV of Geert Wilders has a good chance of becoming the biggest party of the country, it is excluded from cooperation beforehand by virtually all the parties because of its extreme views as regards Islam. Thus, he is seeking a ban on Islamic schools, mosques and the Koran. For the time being the conservative-liberal VVD of the current premier Mark Rutte seems to be the only party that can come close to the PVV as far as the number of votes is concerned. Other traditional parties that play a role of importance are (according to the order of their size in the polls) the social-liberal D66, the Christian democratic CDA, the progressive left-wing GroenLinks, the social democratic PvdA and the socialist SP. In addition, the elders’ party 50Plus, the social Christian ChristenUnie, the conservative Christian SGP and the Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) may get a piece of the pie. For the rest only the new right-wing parties Forum voor Democratie and VNL and the multicultural DENK seem to stand a chance of winning a seat.