ABSTRACT
Who are the people who vote for the PVV? What are their reasons for supporting the party? There is no shortage of generalisation about PVV voters in the Netherlands. ‘People with a grudge’, was how Frits Bolkestein described his former pupil’s supporters. ‘They’re unemployed, their daughter’s on drugs and their son has run away.’1 The Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands diagnosed PVV voters as suffering from an anxiety disorder, a view supported by psychotherapist Joost Bosland, who saw a connection between the support for the PVV and psychiatric phenomena such as regressive behaviour and borderline personality disorder.2 In Wilders’ own view, his supporters were ‘completely normal’. They are ‘Mr and Mrs Average with their own houses, one nice holiday a year and an active social life’.3 In 2009, he christened these ‘average people’ Henk and Ingrid, a couple who have since become part of Dutch political parlance. All these generalisations are remarkable because the first thing that springs to mind about this group is its substantial size. Since 2006, at least 1.5 million Dutch citizens, probably more, have voted PVV at least once. In an absolute sense, this makes the PVV one of the largest national populist parties in Europe. Nevertheless, certain generalisations can indeed be made about this group without descending into oversimplification and cliché. This chapter describes a few characteristics of PVV voters, based mainly on electoral surveys. I will also offer several explanations for their voting choice.
