I guess we're in for a lot of cries of "We won the election, it's cheating not to let us into the government" from the PVV if they become the biggest.
I hope the response is crystal clear. Winning the election is not about getting the most votes.
Winning the election means getting the support of the majority of the country.
If one quarter voted for you and the rest thinks you're toxic, you haven't won anything, and you don't have a mandate to govern.
Coalitions win elections, not parties. And if they become the biggest party, they don't have a coalition.
@pbloem Is it uncommon to not have the biggest party in the government? We have that half the time. Social democrats are always biggest but they are only in government around half the time.
@drgroftehauge Really? It is indeed very uncommon for us. I'm not sure it has ever happened.
The biggest party usually gets to control the coalition-making process, and they're usually eager to be in government. Does it work different in Denmark?
@drgroftehauge According to ChatGPT, it did happen in 1977 (with the socialists as well).
In 2017 the PVV were second biggest, but they didn't take part in the government.
@pbloem Social democrats were the biggest party from 1924 to 2001 elections. And again since 2015.
But then we've had two mainstream counterparts in Konservativt Folkeparti (conservative people's party) and Venstre (left) on the right wing.
And it's quite common to have a minority government (not everyone wants to be in government since government gets the blame for everything) and quite common to try to include a large number of parties in voting for new legislation.
@pbloem If the government can't continue after an election parliament (in practise the parties of parliament) will ask the queen to appoint a leader of negotiations - the queen appoints whoever the largest share of parliament asks for. Then it will be up to that person to get more than 50% of parliament behind a new government. https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dronningerunde
@drgroftehauge We had roughly the same system until 2012, when they took the Queen/King out of it.
I suppose one difference is that the Dutch left has massively splintered since the 90s. They're only just beginning to coagulate back into a single party.