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Battle state Brabant

Election 2006 update

by Andy Clark

13-11-2006

With the Dutch election still too close to call political parties are working night and day to try and win over undecided voters.

North-Brabant province

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And one key province is coming in for more attention than any other: North Brabant.
 
Campaign leaders have taken to calling the southern province 'battle state' Brabant - it has the greatest number of undecided voters and it is being said whoever wins Brabant will be well on the way to winning the overall election race.

No fewer than eight party leaders have been in the provincial studio of Brabant TV in the last few weeks.
 
The simple reason is that we are entering the end phase of the national election race here in the Netherlands and the province of North Brabant, with the cities Eindhoven, Tilburg, Breda and Den Bosch and a host of smaller towns and villages, has a massive 1.8 million voters, out of 12 million in total in the Netherlands.
 
And even more important a recent opinion poll showed that 31 percent of them still weren't sure who to vote for - that's the highest percentage of uncertainty in the country.
 
Densely populated
Jack de Vries is the campaign leader for the Christian Democrat Party of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. He says "we learn from the history of our elections that most of the time when you win Brabant you can win the election."

The prize is a big one: the size of the province means it will provide around 30 of the 150 members of parliament. In addition, North Brabant is a diverse province with a long history of flexible voting attitudes, says political scientist Ruud Koole from Leiden University.

"It's a very densely populated province where, already from the 1950s onwards, the Catholic population hasn't strictly followed the church in religious matters anymore. And as the people were freed from religious influence in electoral matters, there was an enormous number of voters to win for all parties. Before the 1950s it was the Catholic party that dominated, but since then, it's has been the province where voters change from one party to another more than in any other region."

Focus on Brabant
The Dutch Labour Party - the chief challenger to Prime Minister Balkenende in the elections, began its campaign in Brabant and is spending a lot of time there in the final run up to voting on 22 November.
 
Labour MP Diederik Samson acknowledges that if you win Brabant you'll win overall. 

"That was true for the last election and it may be true for this one, but we want to convince every voter wherever they live."

The opinion polls still show a close race between the Labour Party and the Christian Democrat CDA of the prime minister and, against this background, the floating voters of 'the Dutch swing state' are as important as ever. With just over a week to go to election day everything is still to play for.
 

Tags: balkenende, bos, Brabant, Dutch, elections, netherlands, PvdA

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