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Introduction
Never before has a new political party broken onto the Dutch electoral scene with such success as the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) did in the 2002 parliamentary election.1 With 17 percent of the popular vote, the LPF gained 26 seats in the Second Chamber and became a partner in the first (but short-lived) Balkenende coalition government.
Current scholarly accounts of this dramatic breakthrough have mostly emphasized three factors behind support for the LPF -- one personal and two structural. The personal factor is the performance of Pim Fortuyn on the political scene, after announcing his political ambitions in the fall of 2001 (Kleinnijenhuis et al. , 2003; van Holsteyn and Irwin, 2003; van Praag, 2003). Fortuyn 'dominated the media and determined the content and style of the campaign' (van Holsteyn and Irwin, 2003, 42). He managed to attract no less than 24 percent of all media attention for politicians in the 2002 campaign (followed by incumbent prime minister Wim Kok and cabinet minister Benk Korthals with both just over 7 percent of the media attention) (Kleinnijenhuis et al. , 2003, 86). Fortuyn's domination, dramatically enhanced by his assassination just 9 days before the election, undoubtedly contributed to the LPF result.
The personal factor in the LPF vote may have dominated popular discourse, but it was closely tied with two other, more structural explanations of the LPF success. The first structural explanation has to do with issue (or policy) voting. The LPF brought a distinct issue profile to the electoral arena, which made it attractive for voters with similar policy views. Among the issue priorities put forward by Fortuyn during the campaign, his radical positions on multiculturalism, asylum seekers, and crime seem to explain in good part why a significant portion of the Dutch electorate was attracted to this new competitor (van der Brug, 2003; van Holsteyn and Irwin, 2003; van Holsteyn et al. , 2003; Pellikaan et al. , 2003).
The second more structural explanation, on which there is less agreement among scholars, is discontent with politics. One interpretation suggests that, in addition to issue and ideological proximity with the new party, attitudes of cynicism towards government and politics were also present among parts of the Dutch public at the time of the...