Who Is the Biggest Party in the Netherlands?

Hat tip NOS.NL and Ben


Thierry Baudet


There is encouraging news out of the Netherlands. The center-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, under Thierry Baudet, is now the largest party in the country. They are opposed to mass migration into the country, and Baudet is a rising star. The below article was translated by Fousesquawk.


https://nos.nl/artikel/2320523-forum-voor-democratie-partij-met-meeste-leden.html


Forum for Democracy Party Has Most Members

Forum for Democracy is the political party with the highest number of members according to numbers from the Documentation Center for Dutch Political Parties (DNPP), which publishes the numbers annually. The is the first time that FvD has the most members of all the parties. In total there are 42,794, which is over 3,000 more than the CDA.

Gerrit Voerman from the DNPP  calls it a unique development, because the party of Thierry Baudet has been in existence for just three years. Last year, 12,000 members joined Forum. In March, the party won the elections in the provincial states, but there was also an internal fight which led to a split in the First Chamber (Senate) under the leadership of co-founder Henk Otten. In December, Baudet claimed that (FvD) was the largest party in the Netherlands.





In recent years, Forum has put strong effort in the recruitment of new members. Thus, at the end of last year, the party launched " FvD Switch Weeks", in which mostly VVD members  were called on to switch to the Baudet party. "The number of members is important for Forum because of the charisma of the party, they can now say they are the largest party," says political commentator Xander van der Wulp. "It is really an achievement that they have collected the members in such a short time, as the number with other parties is falling."

More members also ensures a higher government subsidy. The subsidy consists of a general share, that is for all parties, and a special share. The largest proportion of the special share (80%) is based on the number of Parliamentary seats, the other 20% on the number of members. 

The second party is the PvdA with more than 41,000 members, followed by the CDA with 39,000. Last year the two parties lost members, in which they were outdistanced by Forum. The number of members for the CDA went down more than 9% and the PvdA 3%. The most withdrawals were with the SP, the party lost 12% of its members. The VVD, the biggest party in the Second Chamber (Lower House), is in 9th place.

Other parties that grew are the Party for Animals and Green-Left. The Christian Union and Denk remain stable. In total there are more than 300,000 people who are members of a political party represented in the Second Chamber.