UvA students predict: Which cabinet is ideologically the most stable?
In the run-up to the general election, party leaders are mainly announcing which parties they will not form a government with. But which cabinet is ideologically the most stable? That is predicted by the so-called ‘coalition predictor’, developed by UvA student Merijn Vervoorn and some co-students.
Merijn, how did you come up with the idea for a coalition predictor?
“I follow politics closely, and during a group project for the Bachelor’s programme in Computational Social Science in February, my group members and I noticed that the cabinet – after lengthy coalition negotiations – was once again faltering due to internal divisions.”
“What if we had had a cabinet with parties that were more aligned in terms of policy? We had a dataset at our disposal of all the debates in the House of Representatives from 2012 to 2024 and decided to create a coalition predictor based on how parties debated about certain issues.”
“We ran the transcripts of the debates through a model that assigns a score to how parties thought about 52 topics. Based on that, the model predicts the most likely coalition. And, entirely by coincidence, the cabinet fell on the day we presented our results to our fellow students.”
How does your coalition predictor differ from other coalition predictors?
“Most online tools look purely at which coalitions are possible in terms of seat numbers. Parties must collectively have a majority (76) of seats to form a coalition. We also look at whether the parties are ideologically compatible based on the debates in the House of Commons.”
“In addition, we also looked at previous cabinets. And at the composition of the Senate: if there is no majority there, it is more difficult to get laws through the Senate. And party leaders also have an opinion about who they want to govern with. That is why we have built in a button called ‘Believe Yesilgöz (VVD)’: you can click on it if you believe that the VVD will not govern with GroenLinks-PvdA.”
If you turn off that button, the model predicts a coalition with GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, CDA and VVD based on the latest polls. How likely do you think that is?
“I do expect that these parties will be able to form a cabinet together. If you exclude the VVD, JA21 is an option, but D66 leader Rob Jetten has already said that he finds a government with JA21 a joke. JA21 leader Eerdmans also wants to govern only in a centre-right cabinet.”
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And if the PVV becomes the largest party?
“That’s not an option in our model because most parties don’t want to govern with the PVV. Another possibility is that the PVV will govern with BBB and JA21 in a minority cabinet. That has only happened once or twice in history, but it is possible. In that case, they would have to get another party on board for every bill, so I don’t think that would be a very stable cabinet either.”
How useful is your coalition predictor?
“It really started as a student project. And in the end, we realised that forming a coalition is more complex than a model can describe. So it should always be taken with a grain of salt. And ultimately, it also depends on the individual choices that party leaders make. However, I will update the predictor with the final results and then we will see if the prediction comes true.”
