“FVD membership says nothing about the number of voters!” – The Daily Standard

According to political RTL commentator Jos Heymans, it misses Thierry Baudet that the number of FVD members “means nothing at all”. According to Heymans, the VVD is the ultimate example of this. With almost 24,000 members, that party is in ninth place, but has been the largest party in the country for almost a decade.

In his weekly column, political commentator Heymans lashes out at the euphoric mood within the Forum for Democracy about the number of members achieved. The FVD has recently been able to call itself the largest member party in the Netherlands, but according to Heymans, Thierry Baudet packs it in “big words that he can often not live up to”.

In his speech, Heymans also refers to the PVV, the other party on the right:

“The PVV has only one member (Geert Wilders), but is the second party in the Netherlands with 20 seats in the Lower House. Now you can say that the PVV is an exception because Wilders does not allow members. If he did, the PVV might also have more than 40,000 members; we will never know.”

To reinforce his vision, Heymans also involves the other political parties. He calls the VVD “the example” of a party with relatively few members but many voters:

“The VVD is the example of a party where members and voters are far apart. In 1982, the last year of Hans Wiegel as political leader, the VVD crossed the historic border of 100,000 members. But when the VVD became the largest party in the country for the first time in 2010, it only had 36,000 members; tens of thousands less than PvdA, CDA and SP. The last three again had far fewer Chamber seats. “

Heymans recognizes that members are important for a political party, mainly because they pay contributions. “But the members do not determine the political power of a party. The voters decide who gets the most votes, “says Heymans.

According to Heymans, Thierry Baudet makes the number of members politically greater than it actually is:

“The leader of the Forum believes that the growth of members shows” that people want change “, that a renewal movement is starting. That is just the question. There are 316,000 people in a political party. A figure that pales to the number of voters entitled to vote of nearly 13 million. They determine which party will be the largest and who will take the lead in the formation. Not the party members. “