Thirty-year-old Wouter van Steenberge still lives at home with his mum. “I had an academic education, I have no study debts, I did everything right,” he says. “My generation has no hope at the moment.”
In the face of a crippling housing crisis, van Steenberge is one of a growing number of Dutch voters turning not to the far-Right, but to a centrist party making a surprising comeback, Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). The CDA’s campaign emphasises “core Dutch values” like fairness and solidarity while making clear that you don’t have to be Christian to agree.
The country is at a crossroads. In the 2023 elections, the bouffant-haired veteran of the far-Right, Geert Wilders, won the most seats, shaking the political establishment. But by June, he triggered the collapse of the government, citing a lack of support for his asylum policies.
Ahead of a general election on 29 October, the question is whether anti-establishment parties that feed on feelings of exclusion will continue to rise or whether a different story of nationhood can emerge. The CDA does not define itself in opposition to outsiders but as an inclusive movement of “Christian democracy”. Created in the Seventies to forge bonds between Protestants and Catholics, it’s back with a quiet “c”.
The latest polls show a dramatic rise in CDA support that would give it some 25 of the 150 seats in parliament — compared to its current five. At a packed AGM and campaign launch in Rotterdam earlier this month, the mood among the 1,500 attendees was jubilant. Louder than the crowd’s rendition of the Dutch national anthem were the words of praise for their cherub-faced soft-spoken leader, Henri Bontenbal.
“Louder than the crowd’s rendition of the Dutch national anthem were the words of praise for their cherub-faced soft-spoken leader, Henri Bontenbal.”
“Are you, like me, meeting people every day who say: ‘I’m going to vote for Bontenbal’?” former CDA prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende asked the room. “They say the CDA is needed again in Dutch politics. When you look at what is happening, it seems like a bad theatre show in The Hague. There’s a gap between people and politics, trust is falling away, democracy is under pressure… And then there is Henri Bontenbal, who comes here with another story.”
The term for common decency, fatsoen, is on everyone’s lips. The programme voted through at the Rotterdam meeting stressed a return to values many Dutch people see when they look in the mirror: fairness, moral integrity, order, solidarity and kindness. While the CDA advocates for “more grip on migration”, it refused to support a migration bill this summer because a Party for Freedom amendment would have criminalised offering illegal migrants something as simple as a bowl of soup.
The Party for Freedom, though, is still leading in the polls. But having achieved little during its year of government, it has been losing voters while the up-and-coming far-Right party JA21 threatens to split its base. JA21 voices the same suspicion of immigration and Islam but with politer words. By contrast, Wilders’ unfiltered comments resulted in a criminal conviction and two decades of 24-hour protection against death threats. JA21 has attracted scores of members; the Party for Freedom has just one – Wilders.
Even if the Party for Freedom wins the most seats again, it has no realistic hope of forming a majority government in the splintered Dutch scene. Every other major party — the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), GreenLeft/Labour and the CDA — has already ruled out working with it. JA21 leader Joost Eerdmans dismissed the idea of a minority far-Right government on stage at that conference, wondering: “Is that a stable answer to the mess and chaos that was left behind, also by Wilders?”
Dutch society used to be organised around “pillars” — groups such as Catholics or socialists who had their own media, neighbourhoods and several main political parties. But the highly proportional parliamentary system has struggled with the ever-more splintering of political support across a dizzying number of parties.
Amid this political volatility, the country faces real, pressing issues. Someone earning an average income can afford just 2% of homes nationwide. There is a housing shortage due to an increase in single-person households and population growth of a million since 2014, largely through labour migration. Combined with lax lending rules and the world’s largest homeowner subsidies, this means home prices have doubled. (The average property goes for almost twice the UK average.)
According to a recent state commission report, the country needs to grow to around 20 million people by 2050 to maintain prosperity. But as Europe’s second most densely populated nation, the Netherlands faces hard choices about how to use its land: for meat processing, logistics depots, or to address the country’s nitrogen crisis caused by decades of intensive farming. And it’s hard to deny the impact of climate change in one of the world’s most vulnerable river deltas.
In contrast to the hard-Right narrative, the CDA is sending a clear message about responsible choices and trade-offs. Beneath the focus on decency, the CDA strikes a soft-Right, pro-Europe chord. The party would criminalise rejected asylum seekers who refuse to return to their country of origin. It also backs a controversial law to distribute asylum centres more evenly across the country. Regarding the country’s nitrogen problem, it sides with the farmer unions which plan to cut emissions through innovation and voluntary buy-outs, with sanctions only a last resort. On security, it proposes a “freedom contribution” tax and Scandinavian-style military service. And when it comes to addressing the housing crisis, it wants to phase out the world’s most generous mortgage tax breaks and stop existing homeowners blocking new builds — a big deal for young people like Van Steenberge, who has bought an apartment but is waiting for a court ruling on whether it can be built due to protests from the neighbours.
Bontenbal refuses to trade insults with opponents, explains controversial policies clearly, and defends compromise. He is now seen by voters as a safe pair of hands. “You can say now he is the new rising star, like Balkenende in 2002 and later Mark Rutte,” Joyce Boverhuis, pollster at EenVandaag, said. “In our polls, we see that of all the party leaders, he is most seen as prime minister because of his stability, decency, and also [that] he is open to make compromises. He is really realistic and people appreciate that.”
Many think the centre can in fact hold. At the CDA conference, D66 liberal democrat MP Jan Paternotte, an unlikely guest, expressed cautious optimism. “I think that people have had enough of arguments, of promises made that turn out to be pipe dreams. There is a huge need for honest politics.”
The Dutch have always been deeply pragmatic about bridging political differences. According to D66 “list pusher” Sandra Phlippen, who is also chief economist at ABN Amro bank, climate collaboration isn’t Left or Right, but part of the national identity since devastating 1953 floods sparked the delta programme. “This fundamental belief in being safe from the water is going to begin to change,” she told me, a few days before conference weekend.
Anything can change in Dutch politics. In the last two elections, there were last-minute spurts first for D66, and then in 2023 for the Party for Freedom. Tom Louwerse, director of research at the Leiden University Institute of Political Science, closely monitors the polls and sees signs that voters could roll the dice and make a Left-Right coalition likely – with Bontenbal and his CDA in pole position.
“Presenting this more moderate image until now has served him quite well,” he said. “We also see sometimes in Dutch elections that parties peak too early, so you never know whether that’s the case or that they just keep on growing until election day.”
Some believe any centrist government would be reckless to ignore the same anti-establishment discontent that sparked Brexit and propelled Donald Trump to power. Hans-Martin ten Napel, associate law professor at Leiden University, has studied the CDA’s comeback but believes radical voices are still loud, even if it is broadcast on alternative channels.
“The system made sense in the previous century when society was not so fragmented,” he said. “But I think parts of the electorate have become increasingly frustrated. You can vote for change, as perhaps two-thirds did in November 2023. But nothing ever seems to change.”
Will the Christian Democratic Appeal have the moral courage — and the votes — to break that cycle?
