Photo: Brandon Hartley
Some 810,000 first-time voters are eligible to take part in this week’s general election. That seems like a substantial number. But just how important is the youth vote to the Dutch elections?
In a country of some 17 million people, new voters make up roughly 5% of the population. In the Netherlands, young voters tend to come out in force. In 2017 during the last parliamentary elections, 76% of the under-25s cast a ballot.
‘All parties are fiercely competing for them,’ says Wendelmoet Boersema, a political journalist at Dutch daily newspaper
Trouw. ‘It’s a black hole what they’ll do, but how you vote your first time, you generally stick to.’