As ballots continue to be counted across Europe, a clear picture has emerged of how the northern provinces of Drenthe, Friesland and Groningen voted: largely Labour.
Translation by Traci White
Dagblad van het Noorden has created an interactive map showing how each individual municipality voted, and the north is decidedly red, the colour of the Dutch labour party. Drenthe was nearly entirely behind labour except for the southern municipalities of De Wolden, which voted for the prime minister’s party, the VVD, and Hoogeveen, which threw their support behind the CDA.
In Friesland, the Leeuwarder Courant reports that Sudwest-Fryslan, the newly formed Noardeast-Fryslan, Westerkwartier voters primarily supported the Christian Democratic Appeal. The municipality of Dantumadiel went for the Christian Union – Reformed Political Party, and Terschelling and Tytsjerksteradiel were still tallying their votes as of Monday morning. The only exception to the Labour rule in Groningen was the city of Groningen, which went for GroenLinks.
Across Europe, more centrist parties lost ground to more ideologically outspoken parties on the right and left. That trend held true for the Netherlands as well: according to Politico, the labour party – likely buoyed by the popularity of Frans Timmermans – were the surprise winners from Thursday’s vote, securing 19 percent of the ballots, which was ten percent higher than five years ago and set the party up to double their number of seats in the European parliament.
Prime minister Mark Rutte’s VVD earned 14.6 percent (up two percent), the CDA earned around 12 (down around 4 percent) and progressive party GroenLinks and extreme right party Forum voor Democracy looked set to have around 11 percent (three seats) a piece. The PVV and the Socialist Party both lost all of their seats which they had won in the 2014 elections.
Check out how your municipality voted at Dagblad van het Noorden.
