Dutch party leaders have clashed in a tetchy televised debate, as the\u00a0Netherlands\u00a0election campaign entered its final days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The country\u2019s six main party leaders confronted each other in Rotterdam on Monday night, as a new poll suggested Frans Timmermans\u2019 GreenLeft\/Labour was neck and neck \u2013 on 27 seats of a total 150 \u2013 with the party that has led the past four governments, the People\u2019s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) under\u00a0Dilan Ye\u015filg\u00f6z-Zegerius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the poll also showed a six-seat gain to 26 seats for Geert Wilders\u2019 anti-Islam Party for Freedom, which has been campaigning on\u00a0distrust in government\u00a0and an immigration \u201cstop\u201d. Support for centre-right popular backbencher\u00a0Pieter Omtzigt\u00a0and his New Social Contract dropped four seats to 21 \u2013 although after the poll was taken, Omtzigt said he would be a prime ministerial candidate, one uncertainty that was troubling voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the debate, the six main party leaders, including Farmer-Citizen Movement\u2019s Caroline van der Plas and liberal democratic D66 leader Rob Jetten, interrupted each other and failed to agree on any subjects except the\u00a0housing crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At one point, Van der Plas burst out that it was \u201csuper-irritating\u201d to be interrupted by Jetten, and Ye\u015filg\u00f6z-Zegerius attacked Timmermans on the costs of his social equity and climate plans. The former European Union heavyweight said Ye\u015filg\u00f6z-Zegerius should take responsibility for recent government scandals on\u00a0childcare benefitsfraud and ignoring earthquake damage caused by\u00a0Groningen gas extraction. \u201cI think a VVD that wants to take no accountability at all for the last 13 years is shameless and hope it is on the reserve benches for a while,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ill-tempered spectacle came as the new poll suggested that a previous survey last week \u2013 which\u00a0showed a surge for the far-right Party for Freedom\u2013 may also have galvanised progressive votes for GreenLeft\/Labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Timmermans, meanwhile, has been campaigning for left-leaning voters to support him instead of smaller groups \u201cotherwise the parties will find each other [in a coalition] on the right\u201d.\u00a0Researchpublished on Monday from EenVandaag broadcaster\u2019s opinion panel suggested half of Timmermans\u2019 supporters would vote for him strategically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peter Kanne, a researcher for I&O, said: \u201cFrom left to right, people think that immigration has become too big a problem.\u201d Two-thirds want less of it, which has benefited the Party for Freedom, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYe\u015filg\u00f6z has said she would embrace Wilders and let him in and Wilders has been very clever, saying he may be milder and can put things on ice, so it all comes together perfectly and you shouldn\u2019t be surprised about the polls,\u201d he told television programme Khalid & Sophie. \u201cBut there are error margins and this isn\u2019t a prediction. The four parties are very close.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Campaigning turned violent in a cafe in Groningen when Thierry Baudet, head of the far-right Forum for Democracy, was hit on the head with a\u00a0bottle of beer\u00a0a few weeks after being\u00a0attacked with an umbrella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dutch party leaders have clashed in a tetchy televised debate, as the\u00a0Netherlands\u00a0election campaign entered its final days. The country\u2019s six main party leaders confronted each other in Rotterdam on Monday night, as a new poll suggested Frans Timmermans\u2019 GreenLeft\/Labour was neck and neck \u2013 on 27 seats of a total 150 \u2013 with the party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[10855,4321,10387,11254,8440,11399,11606,913,9478,10339,7280,911,8031,9505,1195,4028,5491,2264,11715,10925,6094,5699,1828,12287,286,11973,7231,7962],"class_list":["post-40209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-blows","tag-broadcaster","tag-campaign","tag-citizen","tag-crisis","tag-debate","tag-democracy","tag-democratic","tag-dropped","tag-dutch","tag-earthquake","tag-election","tag-equity","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-freedom","tag-gas","tag-government","tag-housing","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-islam","tag-labour","tag-movement","tag-netherlands","tag-one","tag-union","tag-ye"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40211,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40209\/revisions\/40211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}