Once again Dutch parliamentary elections in Thailand
On September 13, Thailandblog.nl had the scoop to announce the votes cast by Dutch voters in Bangkok for the parliamentary elections.
I was curious how this “Thai” voting behavior related to voters elsewhere abroad and of course also to voters in the Netherlands itself.
I found a lot on denhaag.nl/verkiezingen information abroad and it is interesting to take a closer look. Of the 48.374 registered Dutch voters abroad, 4.920 applied for a voter's pass to vote in the Netherlands at a polling station, 2.961 authorized another voter in the Netherlands to vote for them and 40.493 applied for postal voting documents.
Of the 40.493 postal voters, 35.898 postal votes (88%) were received on time at a postal voting office in The Hague or abroad. Most postal voters have sent their vote to The Hague, whose more than 28.000 voters live in Europe, but the specification per country is not known.
The polling stations at Dutch embassies received a total of 6.669 votes, of which a large proportion (2.379) came from the United States. Out of the us in here Thailand neighboring countries we see the following picture:
- 263 votes from China
- 167 votes from Indonesia
- 92 votes from Malaysia
- 359 votes from Singapore
- 332 votes from Thailand
I then made a chart of the Thai voters, the total number of foreign voters in numbers and percentages and then the percentages of the elections in the Netherlands. For a good overview I have omitted the smaller parties here and the percentages have been rounded:
| Thailand | % | Abroad | % | NL % | |
|
2012 |
2012 |
||||
| votes | votes | ||||
| VVD |
98 |
30 |
11777 |
33 |
27 |
| PvdA |
42 |
13 |
5184 |
15 |
25 |
| SP |
32 |
10 |
2547 |
7 |
10 |
| PVV |
50 |
15 |
1895 |
5 |
10 |
| CDA |
12 |
4 |
1652 |
5 |
9 |
| D66 |
54 |
16 |
7377 |
21 |
8 |
| Chr Union |
15 |
5 |
735 |
2 |
3 |
| Gr.Left |
13 |
4 |
2760 |
2 |
2 |
You can draw your own conclusions, I especially notice the high percentage of D'66 voters abroad and Thailand compared to the Netherlands. Can the 5% of the PVV abroad be explained by the 15 and 10% in Thailand and the Netherlands? The PvdA is also less popular in Thailand and abroad than in the Netherlands itself. An easy explanation is that more well-earning VVD members and D'66 supporters than PvdA members reside abroad, but is that correct? Who knows may say!
An easy and very fast link between high income and VVD and D'66 votes. Perhaps it is true that Dutch people who have gone to live abroad are generally more individual and independent. That they accept that they need to take more care of themselves, regardless of whether they earn a high or a low income. There is no typical social voting behaviour. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but it's also a very plausible explanation.
That does sound plausible to me, Kees. What I do find striking about the results in this list is that D66 scores relatively high in Thailand compared to “NL” but quite low compared to “Abroad” (16% in Thailand versus 21% abroad). Based on the result for “Abroad” a coalition of VVD and D66 would be possible, while this would not work in Thailand.
I had expected many more votes for SP and PVV from the Dutch living abroad. After all, these are the parties that, in principle, do not want to raise the state pension age. Indirectly therefore very important for Dutch people abroad, because if things go against you, if you have taken early retirement, you can now sometimes fall into a hole for 1 month to 2 years or so. Unless the PVDA and the VVD come out now and make a longer reduction scheme than was agreed in the spring with, among others, the VVD and D66.