The SP is soaring in the polls. Emile Roemer must be doing something right. Or is it that all the others are getting it wrong?

Trouw, in its analysis, thinks SP leader Emile Roemer must be pinching himself: his party is gaining seats by the week and has changed from a minority party to an important player. The last Maurice de Hond poll put the SP on 34 seats. At the moment it has 15 seats in parliament.
Disarray
The paper thinks it’s not so much SP leader himself that is instrumental in the party’s success: ‘(..) Roemer doesn’t go out of his way to gain votes. His party, moreover hasn’t changed its programme for years. His party’s success is the result of the disarray that is plaguing the other parties. The PvdA in particular is losing votes to the SP but GroenLinks and the PVV are also watching their voters defect to the SP.’
The Nrc doesn’t see it quite the same way. Political commentator Pieter van Os thinks that the SP’s strength is its remarkable show of unity but he also detects a tendency to roll with the punches.
Quietly compromised
An nrc poll shows that 98 % of the SP party officials think Roemer should lead the party while only 22 % of the PvdA party officials think Job Cohen is the best man for the job. But the PvdA may be divided, the SP seems to have quietly compromised on some of its principles too, Van Os suggests.
‘PvdA members are constantly protesting against the political course set out by the party leadership, on hiking up the pension age, changes in health care policy, or the mission to Afghanistan. Nothing like it happens in the SP. The poll shows how unified the party is even on controversial milestones of accommodation such as the acceptance of the monarchy and the NATO membership. Or the decision of the parliamentary party to sit in on the ‘Stealth’ Committee, the committee on national security.’
Poodle
GroenLinks leader Jolande Sap, however, is punished by GroenLinks voters for veering from Femke Halsema’s left liberal course and supporting the Kunduz mission, writes Trouw, while Cohen, whose opposition party is holding up the cabinet by supporting its decisions of Europe and pensions cannot seem to shake off the damaging PVV epithet of ‘cabinet poodle’.
Elsevier notes how the SP wins seats at the same rate as the PVV loses them. ‘
‘Geert Wilders party has 20 seats, the lowest number since 2010. His criticism of the queen’s scarf and Cor Bosman’s ‘sicked up halal meat’ comment didn’t help matters’, the magazine writes.
Warning
Trouw ends on a warning. ‘It is to be expected that Roemer’s SP will continue to rise in the polls. The media attention and the fact that people like to back a winner will help. But in 2006 the Ipsos Synovate political barometer showed Wouter Bos’ PvdA stood to win 60 seats, galvanizing the CDA and SP who did their utmost to stop the party in its tracks. The PvdA lost 9 seats in the November elections. It was a bitter pill for Wouter Bos who had his eye on the premiership. Roemer mustn’t sit on his laurels. His competitors are undoubtedly hatching some plans of their own’, the paper concludes.