Austerity Anger Boosts European Extreme Parties
In the Netherlands and across Europe, the growing anger towards austerity measures is leading to a boost in support for the far-left and far-right parties. Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull reports from The Hague.

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Dutch Gays Prefer Conservative Parties
NIS: HILVERSUM, 18/04/08 - If only homosexuals were to vote, Proud of the Netherlands (TON) would be the biggest party in the Lower House. Conservative parties are more favoured among them than progressive ones, a poll by TV programme NOVA reveals.

NOVA carried out the survey in cooperation with gay publications Gaykrant and Gay.nl. TON pulled in the votes of 19 percent of the readers of Gaykrant. From Gay.nl, the party of Rita Verdonk won as much as 33 percent. Among all of the Dutch, 13 percent would vote for TON, according to NOVA.

The centre-left D66 party scored best with Gaykrant readers: 22 percent. With Gay.nl, it scored 14 percent. Together, this makes D66 the second party for homosexuals. Among all of the Dutch, only 3 percent would vote D66.

NOVA said this was the first time a survey has been carried out on such a large scale of the gay vote. It did say that compared with a Gaykrant survey from 1997, leftwing parties have dropped out of favour. TON and the Party for Freedom (PVV) of anti-Islam champion Geert Wilders have prompted strong growth towards the right.

In 2007, the Socialist Party (SP), Labour (PvdA) and the leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) together captured 40 percent of the gay vote, compared with just 25 percent now. Together with TON and PVV, the conservatives (VVD) and Christian democrats (CDA) would now win a combined 45 percent, up from 35 percent in 1997. TON's Verdonk and Wilders' PVV have emerged from the VVD.

In the NOVA poll, PvdA scores 7 percent on average among the gays. GroenLinks does better with 10 percent, while the SP gets 7 percent of the gay vote. The VVD would win 9 percent of the votes and PVV, 8 percent. CDA, the biggest Lower House party, traditionally has a very low score among homosexuals (4 percent). [Source: Dutch Gays Prefer Conservative to Leftwing Parties]

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)