what is hilarious is that someone is trying to use the NL election to display that young are not supporting conservatives
some interesting reading
''In the eyes of Frits Bolkestein, a former mentor turned critic of Mr Wilders, they are something else: “People with a grudge. They’re unemployed, their daughter’s on drugs and their son has run away.” The reality is more complicated. The detailed analysis of 2012 data throws up a complex web of reasons for the rise in support for the PVV in the Netherlands but some patterns have emerged. It suggests a clear rural and urban divide in the way communities react to the presence of immigrants. While the percentage of immigrants correlates with the PVV’s vote share in the countryside, this is not the case in the cities. The PVV has a strong foothold in traditionally working-class cities such as Rotterdam, but struggles to gain traction in places such as Amsterdam. Both cities have large immigrant populations. Stijn van Kessel, a politics lecturer at Loughborough University, says: “In some cities he does well, in others he does not.” However, the level of education attainment straddles this town-and-country divide, so that the more qualified the population, the lower the level of support for Mr Wilders. “The vote for the PVV of the low-educated is often framed as sheer stupidity. But this is nonsense. These people know where this party stands,” argues Gijs Schumacher, an expert in populism at the University of Amsterdam. Those without qualifications are likely to feel the brunt of globalisation and immigration, issues that Mr Wilders has railed against since founding his party in 2004. “It is not irrational,” Mr Schumacher added. This means that the most fertile territory for Mr Wilders, outside his home province of Limburg, are rural areas with higher numbers of immigrants and a lower proportion of more educated voters. Education changes outlook, argues Mr van Kessel. “Highly educated people think that they benefit from globalisation, and are socially mobile: it provides them with opportunities rather than threats.” He adds: “Feelings of insecurity, whether justified or not, lead people to vote for the PVV.” The data also throw up a striking contrast to both the UK’s Brexit referendum and last year’s US presidential election. In both those polls older voters showed a higher propensity to support the anti-establishment option. In the Netherlands, however, over-65s have been the least likely age group to support Mr Wilders. Compared with other populist parties in Europe, such as the Front National in France, support for the PVV is relatively young, says Mr Schumacher. “People often form their voting preferences in their early years,” he says. “If there is a new party on voter menus, then young people are more likely to consider it.” The divide in attitudes between town and country also highlights a difference from the Brexit vote. In the UK, areas with very small immigrant communities were among the strongest supporters of a vote for the country to leave the EU. Recent events in Europe could provide a fertile background for the PVV, argues Cas Mudde, a professor in international affairs at the University of Georgia, who has written a number of books on populism. “We have been talking about refugees, terrorism and a failing EU, which is exactly what the radical right says. If that is the position, then the radical right has a good position,” he says. One critical test for Mr Wilders will be whether he can capitalise on the refugee crisis to boost his vote in the cities that have proved largely indifferent to increases in the number of immigrants. But the data, which predate the crisis, suggest that this could be a challenge. The project saw FT journalists examine the impact of more than 60 demographic and geographic factors, ranging from income levels and ethnicity to educational qualifications and population density, on the 2012 general election and earlier national votes. The 60 variables were distilled to the most significant factors in an attempt to glean insights into the forces driving the PVV’s success. The FT will be running similar exercises for all the major elections in Europe this year and refining its models with the data from each one. Education The strongest relationship between the PVV’s vote share and any demographic indicator was with education: the higher the proportion of the population that left the academic system without a degree or higher vocational qualification, the bigger the vote for Mr Wilders.''
