The Effects of Splinter Parties Under a Restricted Scaled Banzhaf Value

In this thesis, I construct a model to analyze the political color of a country. The political color of a country is the weighted average of the political color of the parties weighted by their political power. The political power distribution is based on the restricted scaled Banzhaf value and the following four restrictions: (1) majority voting rule, (2) minimum winning coalition, (3) maximum number of parties and (4) maximum left-right distance. With this model, I analyze whether the recent Dutch right-wing splinter parties PVV and TON have reason to exist. It seems that the splintering of the right segment of the Dutch political spectrum has resulted in a leftward shift of the political color of the Netherlands, which is certainly not what PVV and TON had in mind. This result is sensitive though, namely if PVV wins one or two seats and convinces – if possible – CDA to cooperate, the political color of the Netherlands will not shift to the left but to the right.