The fight on the right: what drives voting for the Dutch Freedom Party and for the Forum for Democracy?

Abstract

In 2017, the Forum for Democracy (FvD) and the Freedom Party both won seats in the Dutch parliament. Both of these parties are radical right-wing populist parties. It does not happen often that two radical right-wing populist parties gain seats in the same election. The question is to what extent these two radical right-wing populist parties have been able to carve out different niches for themselves. This paper examines the competition between these two parties looking at three surveys spanning between 2017 and 2019, when FvD became the largest party in the Dutch Senate. The paper finds that there are social-economic differences between the two electorates in terms of economic policy preferences and education level. The electorate of the FvD is also more libertarian where it comes to moral issues than PVV voters are. The paper concludes that despite not having the manifesto of a neo-liberal populist party, in electoral terms FvD is the functional equivalent of one.