国际英语资讯:News Analysis: Mainstream left risks losing biggest in upcoming Dutch election_时事

国际英语资讯:News Analysis: Mainstream left risks losing biggest in upcoming Dutch election

"The current situation marks a sharp difference. In the previous elections, the competition for the lead was mainly between the largest right- and left-wing parties," said Paul Teule, lecturer in Political Economy at UvA.

Now the leading race is between the VVD and Geert Wilders' anti-Islam populist Party for Freedom (PVV). Lodewijk Asscher, current leader of the PvdA, lags behind among the heads of the established mainstream parties.

Asscher was expected to set the party on a new path when he was elected in December to replace Diederik Samsom, but this expectation was shared by the party's core members, not by the voters, argued Vermeulen. "They replaced their leader with a high ranking member of the coalition government which is taking the blame for unpopular measures."

Asscher is now deputy prime minister and minister of Social Affairs and Employment. "He shouldn't have challenged and stand against Samsom," PvdA voter Carla van Walsum, 66, told Xinhua. "This made me feel unhappy with the party that I have been voting for so many years."

However, she still decided to vote for her party. "Compromise is part of our political system," she argued.

Lastest polls show shifts of voters intentions as the populist PVV slip into second place while VVD taking the lead and conservative Christian Democrats Appeal (CDA), liberal and progressive D66 or the green GroenLinks registering gains.

In a debate held Sunday among eight largest parties' leaders apart from Wilders, who declined to participate, Asscher was rated only seventh with 7.4 percent in an research among viewers.