Election fact-checks

There were a slew of debates and interviews in which politicians made all sorts of claims. We’ve listed some of the claims that were checked by us and other media below.

Immigration and asylum

• CDA leader Henri Bontenbal said on RTL Ontbijtnieuws that he wants to shorten asylum procedures because they take far too long. But that will do little to help, as the problem lies not with the procedures themselves but with the backlog and staff shortages at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND). [Nieuwscheckers]
• BBB party leader Caroline van der Plas claims that incidents involving asylum seekers are increasing, but that’s an oversimplification. The number of incidents within asylum reception centres is indeed rising, but this is mainly due to the growth of the population at those centres due to backlogs at the IND and slow housing flows. However, residents at asylum reception centres were actually suspected of crimes less often in 2024 than in previous years. [Nieuwscheckers]
• According to Caroline van der Plas and Mona Keijzer, Muslims pray in large groups in the streets. Therefore, they want a ban on street prayers and street closures for religious purposes. But such prayers almost exclusively take place on major religious holidays, which Van der Plas says she would not restrict. Outside of those holidays, large-scale Islamic street prayers hardly ever occur. [Nieuwscheckers]
• Jimmy Dijk is once again making claims about the reception of asylum seekers in the richest and poorest municipalities in the Netherlands. He says the 25 wealthiest municipalities do “nothing” with regard to reception, but according to Pointer that’s incorrect. At Nieuwscheckers, we also published a fact-check last week on a related claim, to which we added figures on occupancy at reception centres and data on asylum reception in Lansingerland that we had previously overlooked.
• Asylum centres will not empty out when Ukrainian men return to Ukraine, as Geert Wilders claims, because Ukrainians are not officially asylum seekers. They fall under a different regulation and are, therefore, housed in temporary shelters, such as former office buildings and churches. [Pointer]

Other

• The SGP is campaigning against abortion and suggests in its campaign posters that women choose to have an abortion for five separate reasons. According to scientific research, however, multiple reasons and circumstances often play a role. With its posters, the SGP reduces the complex interplay of values, motives, and convictions to five stereotypical images. [Pointer]
• During the prime ministerial debate, Henri Bontenbal said that the first homosexual ministers were often from the CDA. It is true that the CDA provided the first openly gay minister, but it is possible that there had been ministers before who never made their sexual orientation public. [AD]
• It’s true that many building plans are delayed by lawsuits, but these are mainly initiated by local residents who feel their view is being spoiled. Although the PVV’s manifesto blames environmental organisations that want to protect rare animals, the lawsuits are very rarely filed by these organisations. [Provinciale Zeeuwse Courant]
• Would the VVD’s election plans increase the number of people living in poverty by the population of Den Bosch? Would the number of unemployed people increase by the population of Eindhoven if GroenLinks–PvdA’s plans are implemented? De Leeuwarder Courant checked these claims made during the Debat van het Zuid: the first claim is correct if you round up, but the second is incorrect.
• According to DENK MP Doğukan Ergin, students overwhelmingly voted for DENK in the student elections. However, the image he used to support his claim on X is nothing more than the results of a fraction of the number of participating students at one school. The results of the school elections had not yet been published. [AFP]
• A few years ago, the parties GroenLinks and PvdA merged to form GroenLinks-PvdA. According to misleading posts on social media, voters would need to fill in two circles to vote for the party or mark a green circle under GroenLinks. But such ballot papers would in fact be declared invalid. [AFP]

Late-night fuss about racist PVV images

Some revelations stick, while others are swept away by the news of the day. Why did the story that two PVV MPs were publishing racist AI-generated images of blonde Dutch women being chased by young black men attract so little attention? Hype specialist Menno van den Bos wondered about this just a week and a half ago (read his newsletter!). But two days before the elections, the AI ​​propaganda blew up in the faces of its creators.

The fuse had already been lit in December last year, when De Groene revealed that PVV MP Maikel Boon used AI to create images of white families and threatening immigrants, which he then spread via Facebook pages. Boon denied the allegations, even in Parliament. On October 11, De Groene published a follow-up investigation: Boon’s AI prompts for creating racist AI photos were found online, and the images were published on a PVV Facebook page (“We will NOT press charges against Geert Wilders”) managed by Patrick Crijns, also a Member of Parliament. Boon declined to comment. The issue did not feature in the election debates.

Death threats

Until De Volkskrant published a follow-up two days before the election, AI-generated images of Frans Timmermans were also posted on Crijns’ Facebook page, accusing him of corruption, whilst the comments were full of death threats against him. GroenLinks-PvdA filed a complaint for defamation and threats.

Wilders called the behaviour of his MPs — of which he must have been aware of since at least December — “inappropriate and unacceptable” and apologised to “colleague Timmermans”. He also confirmed the accuracy of the De Groene and De Volkskrant publications. Timmermans refused to accept an apology and called for measures against the two MPs. The affair was a recurring topic in the television debates on Monday and Tuesday and was extensively covered by the news media.

Why did the news about the AI ​​hate speech become such an issue after all? It must have been a matter of timing (two days before the elections) and platform (De Volkskrant has a greater reach than De Groene), but also of approach. The fact that his MPs left death threats against “colleague Timmermans” on their Facebook page forced Wilders to respond, but he did not mention that they had been publishing Der Stürmer-like images of Muslims and immigrants for over a year.

Page offline

The Facebook page “We are NOT filing charges against Geert Wilders” went offline last Friday, shortly after De Volkskrant submitted questions to the administrators. As a result, not only did the AI-generated ​​photos of Timmermans, blonde girls, and threatening immigrants disappear, but also the posts that had been fuelling a conspiracy theory since September to explain a possible election defeat.

According to these posts, the Public Prosecution Service is covering up the case against the murderer of 17-year-old Lisa from Abcoude to avoid favouring the PVV (“Are they waiting to announce anything until after the elections?”). The suspect was staying at a COA (Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers) facility in Amsterdam.

Other election news

• NRC Ombudsman Herman Staal reveals that the newspaper had been working on an AI voting tool, which ultimately did not materialise. In his opinion piece, he reflects on the choices made by the NRC editorial team, why the tool was eventually scrapped, and how this aligns with the NRC Code. [NRC]
• After a user complaint, TikTok failed to act – despite its promises – on violent AI videosshwoing Frans Timmermans being beaten up, devoured by a lion, and depicted as a Nazi. Only after an article appeared in NRC did the platform intervene. [NRC]
• AI has made its mark on Dutch politics and the current election campaign. De Volkskrant bases this conclusion on Campaigntracker.nl, a website that tracks the use of AI in politics. The PVV is the largest user of AI among political parties, and almost two-thirds of political AI messages that cannot be traced back to a party are right-leaning.
• According to research by the University of Amsterdam, it is primarily far-right parties that use AI in their campaigns – not to spread disinformation, but to provoke their audience. Professor of Journalism Studies Damian Trilling explains that such parties feel less bound by (unwritten) rules and conventions, while left-wing parties have principled objections to its use. [NU.nl]
• Research and polling agency Ipsos I&O has conducted a study into public trust in news websites, other websites, social media and apps. According to the research, news sites are the least distrusted, while Facebook, TikTok and X are the most distrusted. Wageningen University is also researching the political topics that voters see appearing in their social media timelines. [Volkskrant]
• EenVandaag explains why the final poll is not a prediction of the election: many undecided voters only decide who to vote for at the very last minute, and polls are estimates that merely provide a snapshot of the balance of opinions at the time they are taken.

Header picture: Sebastiaan ter Burg from Utrecht, The Netherlands, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons