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| Europe | ||
| Deutsche Welle is liveblogging the Dutch election | ||
| 2017-03-15 | ||
Welcome to our rolling coverage of the Dutch election, with the latest news, views and reactions to the divisive race.
All updates in Central European Time (CET)
21.10 Exit polls show Prime Minister Mark Rutte's liberal VVD party leading the Dutch parliamentary elections, taking a projected 31 seats. It looks like a victory for the incumbent, but the party will have to reckon with 10 fewer seats in the 150-member lower house. 20.10 Ipsos reported just before 8pm that the turnout rate was 73 percent - that's considerably higher than at the same time in 2012 (60 percent) but slightly lower than in 2006 (70 percent). 18.00 Turnout hits the 55 percent mark, Dutch public broadcaster NOS reports. The high turnout has forced the city of Amsterdam to print 25,000 additional ballots. 15.30 DW's Rebecca Staudenmaier reporting from Venlo noted that no-one she had talked to would admit to supporting Wilders, but that immigration was an issue for many of them. 12.16 Rutte says the elections can send a message to the world. "We have the upcoming French and German elections. And this is a chance for a big democracy like the Netherlands to make a point - to stop this toppling over of the domino stones of the wrong sort of populism," he said. 11.24 Many voters are complaining about the sheer size of the ballot papers - about 900 names from 28 parties are on the paper, the Telegraaf reported.
In The Hague's city center where many residents are from Turkish, Moroccan or Surinamese backgrounds, a steady flow of voters -‐ many of them women wearing headscarves ‐- came and went at polling stations. One Moslem voter told AFP she was afraid of Wilders' fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... anti-Islam rhetoric. "If you have one person who criticizes, it's OK. But every time another person comes and then another one... then it's really hard to defend yourself," student Khadiga Kallouh, 22 said. "My mother has never voted before, but now she has and encouraged the whole family to do so because the situation is serious," said another headscarf-wearing woman. | ||
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 But every time another person comes and then another one... then it's really hard to defend yourself," Self awareness isn't your strong suit, is it, dear? |
| Posted by: charger 2017-03-15 19:45 |