Only Three Months In, Confidence in the Jetten Cabinet Is in Sharp Decline
Only 22 percent of voters still trust the new D66-VVD-CDA minority government, down from 33 percent at its start, a new survey shows. Coalition voters are joining the disillusioned.
The Dutch cabinet of prime minister Rob Jetten reached its 100-day mark on Tuesday with public confidence in sharp decline. According to a new RTL Nieuwspanel survey of over 18,000 voters, only 22 percent still have confidence in the three-party government, down from 33 percent when it was sworn in on 23 February. Pollsters describe it as one of the steepest early-term drops in Dutch politics.
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Faster fall than the previous cabinet
The decline is unusual in pace. The previous Schoof cabinet started with 37 percent confidence and was still at 36 percent four months on. The Jetten cabinet is well below that level after barely three months. An earlier Ipsos I&O survey put satisfaction with the cabinet at just 24 percent, against 64 percent dissatisfied, lower than at comparable points under both Rutte IV (32 percent) and Schoof (32 percent).
Coalition voters are also walking away
The drop is not limited to the opposition. Among D66 supporters, 57 percent still have confidence in the cabinet, but among coalition partners CDA the figure has fallen to 38 percent, and among VVD voters all the way to 22 percent. “It’s a mess, many voters think,” RTL’s in-house pollster Gijs Rademaker said. “Within the VVD and CDA voter base, almost half of the confidence has evaporated in 100 days.”
Only 12 percent of voters believe the cabinet will manage to make a real difference on the major issues. On specific dossiers, the figures are starker still: only 8 percent expect progress on asylum, 7 percent on the housing shortage, and 2 percent on poverty.
Why expectations are not being met
The cabinet’s central challenge is structural. With 60 of the 150 seats in the Tweede Kamer, it is a minority government and has to find majorities issue by issue. Early attempts to do so have struggled. A bill drafted by the previous right-wing cabinet to tighten asylum law was voted down in the Senate, and a plan to raise the state pension age faster had to be abandoned under pressure from opposition parties and trade unions.
Several promises from the cabinet’s own 100-day plan, from a defence policy document to a first financial progress report, have also slipped. “These are bad numbers,” RTL political reporter Fons Lambie said. “Inside the coalition and the cabinet too, it is acknowledged: there are no results yet.”
The prime minister himself
Confidence in Jetten personally has also softened, although less sharply. At the cabinet’s start, nearly half of voters had confidence in him as prime minister; it is now around a third. “Voters still find Jetten reasonably likeable and reliable, but he is not managing to connect people and parties,” Rademaker said. “His leadership also disappoints voters.”
What now
Jetten’s team is hoping the next phase will be more productive, with negotiations underway on a nitrogen package, on more municipalities taking in asylum seekers under the spreidingswet, and on a deal with opposition parties, unions and employers about social-security reforms. “If those things don’t work out, an autumn full of protest and dissatisfaction looms,” Lambie warned, “and the cabinet’s confidence figures will get even lower.”
For a cabinet that took office under the banner of a more cooperative, less quarrelsome politics, the 100-day verdict is sobering: voters appreciate the change in tone, but they want change in substance, and that is what is missing so far.