7 days till election day

It's only 7 days till election day for the Dutch parliament. Daily forecasts are displayed to us, politicians striving for as much time on television and radio as possible. Two weeks ago everything was set for a close finish ("too close to call") between our current prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende and coming man Wouter Bos from the social democrats (labour). The campaign started off with a radio debate in which Balkenende played an unusual tough battle. Bos was more or less crushed. Nevertheless, Bos kept his campaign in the direction in which his party (PvdA) would probably settle for a coalition with Balkenendes CDA (Christian Democrats). Looking at the current predictions this may have been a crucial mistake. A lot of citizens don't want the current coalition and/or their policy to continue for another 4 years. By stating that a coalition with CDA is the most preferable one, Bos has set for a course in which people believe that Balkenende will remain prime minister and therefore will be able to continue his current policy: voting for Bos means voting for Balkenende. Therefore a lot of voters seem to move further to the left (in the spectrum of politics) and found the Social Party (SP), led by Jan Marijnissen. Jan has an image to be a modest and honest politician, a guy you may want to drink a beer with. A politician who worked in the meat factories of Oss and who knows what it is not to be rich. Jan is hot at the moment, looking at a predicted number of 28 seats (compared to 9 seats the SP has at the moment). The fourth party that has pretentions to become part of the new cabinet are the liberal democrats (VVD). They - in my opinion - have a leadership problem: two leaders battling, and -which is worse- who have different visions about major issues. As a consequence the voters don't know where the VVD stands for and they tend to leave the VVD for an alternative. Finally, where do the democrats of D66 stand? From an inside view (my wife is involved, as she participates in the elections) I witness a rather modest campaign strategy. Alexander Pechtold does get some television time, but there is no movement in the number of predicted seats. They don't spread around posters to draw attention from the public. There seems to be a little trend upwards. I have a simple mathematic prediction. Twelve years ago D66 gained 24 seats, eight years ago they decreased to 12, four years ago to 6. So in my prediction would be that D66 will end up with 3 seats in 2006. I truly hope it will be more, they have a lot of good issues and ambition, especially in the field of education.