Only 20% of Dutch voters have confidence in Rutte IV Cabinet after one year in office

After exactly one year in office, only 20 percent of Dutch voters have confidence in the Rutte IV Cabinet - even less than the meager 28 percent who trusted the new Cabinet when the King swore it in on 10 January 2022. Only a third of voters think Rutte IV will last until 2025, with 40 percent predicting the Cabinet will fall in the coming year, EenVandaag reports based on its own poll.

Rutte IV struggled with a crisis of confidence from the start. Rutte III had to resign over the childcare allowance scandal, in which the Tax Authority left thousands of parents in financial difficulties by falsely accusing them of fraud and ordering them to repay their childcare benefits. Many voters hoped that the new Cabinet would be a breath of fresh air. But instead, they got a Cabinet consisting of exactly the same parties as Rutte III and many of the same Ministers.

The Cabinet enjoyed a brief spike in confidence in February and March when voters celebrated the end of coronavirus restrictions, and a majority supported the sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine.

But that dwindled again when the war in Ukraine started affecting Netherlands residents with unprecedented price increases for energy and food. Farmers' protests against the nitrogen policy and the crisis in asylum shelter were also new last year. And those came on top of pre-existing issues like the ongoing scarcity in the housing market, the long-dragging compensation for Groningen earthquake damage, and the looming climate crisis.

Over 80 percent of voters EeenVandaag polled in December predicted that all these crises would not improve or even worsen in 2023.

Many voters feel that the Cabinet is too afraid to make real decisions and keeps pushing problems forward for someone else to deal with. Two-thirds (67 percent) said they want the Cabinet to make tougher political decisions, even if they don’t agree with those decisions.

That sentiment is reflected in the few points voters gave Rutte IV credit for last year. Those mainly concern files on which the government made clear decisions. For example, a majority of voters support the climate goals and the plans to build two new nuclear power plants to achieve them. And despite the disrupting farmers’ protests, 55 percent of voters support the goal of reducing nitrogen emissions by half by 2030.