2019 Dutch general election (The Dutch Republic)

The eighteenth Dutch general election was held on February 18, 2019. The governing All-Dutch Workers' Party was able to expand its plurality in the Gemeentendag to an absolute majority for the first time since 1951. The election also saw the return of former Prime Minister Job Cohen to the positions of ADWP chairman and head of state after being ousted by his rival and fellow ADWP member Diedrik Samsom.

While the ADWP was able to achieve a grand electoral success, the DPPP under former Gemeentendag president Maxime Verhagen performed even worse than in the previous election, allowing for the ADWP's total dominance in Dutch politics. Verhagen's subsequent resignation as party leader triggered a leadership election, in which right-wing populist Joost Eerdmans was able to defeat the disjointed moderate party establishment.

Background and campaign issues
While the ADWP-PAN coalition government under Samson was generally popular, the Prime Minister, who represented the environmentalist wing of his party, had a relatively weak position within his party. His policies were often seen as elitist, not in line with the ADWP's self-image as a party for all Dutch citizens and therefore unpopular with blue collar workers. His opponents, led by former PM Cohen, who had been replaced by Samson after a leadership election he himself called to legitimize his policies in 2014, put forward the theory Samson could have won an absolute majority in 2015 had he not alienated voters in the industrial province of Noord-Brabant. Main points of contention were the planned phaseout of nuclear power and tax cuts for technology companies, with which Samson attempted to make the Netherlands Europe's main centre of technological advancement and commerce. After a drawn-out battle for the party leadership which significantly hurt the ADWP's polling numbers, Cohen and his supporters, including the current president of the parliament Khadija Arib, were able to force Samson to resign in 2018 by threatening a vote of no confidence. However, as a gesture of reconciliation, Cohen made Samson his running mate for the election and later appointed him to the office of Vice Prime Minister. In addition to the ADWP, the DPPP, PAN and NLP appointed new leaders in reaction to disappointing results in the 2015 election. These candidates were adherents to the respective main party policy lines an backed by the parliamentary establishment.

Despite its initial disunity, the ADWP quickly came to dominate the election campaign. Its demands for a higher minimum wage and corporate tax rate, a better-funded public education system and monetary grants to green technology start-ups as a replacement for the previously mentioned tax reductions were highly popular with the Dutch electorate and barely left any room for the oppositions' demands to be heard and discussed. Cohen also heavily campaigned in Noord-Brabant and promised during a rally that "every job in this province will stay in this province - perhaps not in its current form, but it will stay!" Seeing the high approval for Cohen's proposals, Verhagen and the DPPP were reluctant to criticize these policies due to fears of alienating workers, especially in the highly competitive provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg. Analyst Twan Huys went as far as stating that "everything Cohen promises, Verhagen promises to a lesser extent. This is, quite frankly, a recipe for disaster."

Although the Chinese refugee crisis was largely regarded as over and irrelevant, the right-wing NPPN managed to stoke xenophobic fears among the electorate, particularly in the christian-conservative east of the country and obtained some seats from disgruntled DPPP and CDPN voters.

The CPoNL had a more radical left-wing manifesto for this election, allowing it to differentiate itself from the major parties, while the PAN and NLP were largely eclipsed by the ADWP and DPPP, respectively.

Results
The ADWP obtained an absolute majority of seats, allowing it to form a government under Cohen without coalition negotiations.