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Comment by kawera | Hacker News Reader

Call me naive but Trump's repugnant behaviour and actions may well steer voters away from similar european candidates. The rise of Martin Schulz, plus Merkel, is probably enough to stop Germany's far right from gaining power. Austrians have shown restraint in the last election and at least for now Spain and Portugal are pretty safe. Will Hamon/Macron be enough to block the FN in France? Lest not forget that the FN inherited most votes from the Communist Party, specially in the north. Could you give us an overview of the situation in the Netherlands?

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Call me naive but Trump's repugnant behaviour and actions may well steer voters away from similar european candidates.

Or it might show them that it's possible to "take action against the muslim/refugee threat" and they'll demand the same from their candidates.

The most terrible nuances, like the ban affecting permanent residents, weren't reported in the news here. Most people wouldn't understand how the US system works anyway.

NL is about (March) to make a huge shift to ultra-right. The coming elections are predicted to be a landslide victory for the PVV, the extremist/nationalist party which is pushing those exact same buttons that Trump is pushing.

We may end up in a very strange situation where the largest political party will not be part of government and where the prime minister will be part of that party (a constitutional crisis, historically the largest party has always delivered the minister president because they always were part of the coalition, it has never happened that the largest party was not part of the coalition but it just might happen). I'm waiting for the first wave of articles pointing this out and trying to decide whether largest party meant largest party in the coalition or largest party in an absolute sense.

Like you I hope that there will be some kind of vaccination effect from the damage Trump is wreaking on the USA but that may just end up being wishful thinking.

That's not quite correct. It happened in 1977 and in 1982.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_1977

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_1982

Excellent information, thank you. So it will be the coalition rather than the largest party. I was hoping for that but could not easily find a source to make that un-ambiguous, precedent is better than anything else.

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