People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and its leader and current Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, remains expected to snatch 35 seats in the House of Representatives.
The surprising second runner-up — Sigrid Kaag’s D66 (Democrats 66) — is expected to obtain 24 seats.These are great elections results for the progressive liberal party, but is now is three seats less than the trailblazing 27 seats yesterday’s IPSOS exit poll predicted.
Vote counting continues
This preliminary forecast comes from the election service of the ANP — Het Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau — and is based on 88.5% of the votes at 8:30 this morning. Amsterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague are included, whereas the vote counting is still ongoing in Rotterdam. There may still be some (marginal) changes further up the road.
The final distribution of seats has yet to be calculated, but it probably won’t differ much from what we’re seeing right now. The counting is going slower than in the previous 2017 election. This is mainly due to the coronavirus measures that are currently in place, as well as the fact that more parties are on the ballot this year.
Who gets the other seats?
Geert Wilders’ PVV (Party for Freedom) is the third-largest party, expected to get 17 seats. Then comes the CDA with 15 seats (one more than in the exit poll of yesterday), Forum for Democracy (FvD) (eight seats), and GroenLinks with a disappointing seven seats. PvdA and SP are also both up at nine seats.
Where the VVD and D66 are hailed as the big victors, the leftist parties SP, GroenLinks and PvdA are generally being considered the losers of the Dutch elections of 2021.
Remember that horrible benefits scandal? The parties of the two MPs who did most to uncover that (CDA and SP) were massively punished, the party arguably most responsible for it actually won seats.
— Pepijn Bergsen (@pbergsen) March 17, 2021
There are also some new parties set to make an entrance. Populist right-wing JA21 stands to get four seats. Pan-European party Volt is set for three. A few other parties are expected to gain one seat, but that’s still a tense and developing situation for them since that can also change with the last votes coming in.
As it is now, there will be an impressive 17 (!) parties present in the Dutch parliament, there haven’t been that many parties present since 1918.
Are you surprised by the Dutch election results? Let us know in the comments below!
Image: EU2017EE Estonian Presidency/Wikimedia Commons/CC2.0
Editor’s Note: Abuzer van Leeuwen also contributed to this article.