Last year, Karremans’ party still ended up in an exciting neck-and-neck with social-liberals D66. But in 2018, the VVD is top dog on campus. Of the 970 ballots cast, 345 went to VVD. During the national elections, one out of three voters at Woudestein voted for D66. This time round, it was less than a quarter.
Remarkably, the most popular D66 face among campus voters wasn’t top candidate Saïd Kasmi, but number two on the list, Chantal Zeegers. Like Karremans, Zeegers also has an Erasmus background – as well as making her mark on Rotterdam’s student scene. She is a former student of Social History and former member of the SSR-R board.
No U-Buntu and Jezus Leeft
Similar to last year’s national elections, the greens GroenLinks came in third at polling station 242, with 111 votes. The rest of the political landscape on campus offers a fairly fragmented picture, with nearly every party receiving a modicum of student support. The only parties to strike out at the Woudestein polling booth were U-Buntu Connected Front and Jezus Leeft, with no one colouring in a box on their lists.
Polarisation in local politics was the subject of nation-wide scrutiny in the run-up to the elections. While many people wondered how parties like NIDA, DENK and PVV would perform in Rotterdam, they actually failed to excite the interest of the campus electorate. Nine people voted NIDA, five cast their ballot for DENK, while PVV had to make do with two votes. Leefbaar Rotterdam, on the other hand, could count on considerable support in the C Hall: 66 people voted for Eerdmans and co.
Home advantage
You could find quite a few EUR students and staff on the lists for Rotterdam’s municipal elections. Perhaps they had a home advantage of some kind. How did ‘our’ candidates fare on campus? Elene Walgenbach (D66, Public Administration) and Christel Monrooij (CU-SGP, Econometrics) both received 12 votes. Walgenbach will soon be taking a seat on the Council, Monrooij (number 2 on ChristenUnie-SGP’s party list) didn’t make the cut. As number 4 on GroenLinks’s list, assistant professor Jeroen Postma (ESHPM) has also been elected to the council. He received six votes at Woudestein. ESSB doctoral candidate Talitha Stam was placed 12th on D66’s list – meaning that she had a very slim chance of getting in – but nevertheless scored ten red dots in the campus booths. RSM staff members Pinar Coşkun and Kim Harte could both be found on Partij voor de Dieren’s party list and scored two votes and one votes respectively. Law student Burak Yildiz (SP) received four votes, PvdA candidate and fellow Law student Lars Klappe got one. And Leon Graveland, Business Information Management student and number 14 on CDA’s list, had two voters behind him.
Against the new intelligence act
The proposed Intelligence and Security Services Act (Wiv) enjoys very little support on campus. Of the 888 ballots cast in this election, 56 percent opposed the new ‘trawling law’, with only 39 percent in favour. The consultative referendum also saw 43 blank votes. This outcome is comparable to the overall results in Rotterdam: 57.4 percent against and 38.5 percent for the new legislation.
