Sigrid Kaag and party workers celebrate. Photo: Martijn Beekman ANP
The Netherlands went to the polls to elect 150 MPs for the lower house of parliament on Wednesday. Follow the latest news via our live blog and via Twitter.
Liberal parties VVD and D66 the big winners
In its latest prognosis, with 78% of the votes counted, news agency ANP suggests VVD will win 35 seats in the 150 seat parliament, with D66 in second place on 24 – three down on the exit poll but still an increase of five on the party’s result in 2017.
Geert Wilders’ far right PVV lost three seats but remains the third biggest party in parliament. Although his party’s decline has been offset by a sharp rise in support for Thierry Baudet’s far right Forum voor Democratie and the arrival of FvD splinter party JA21, the far right still have less than 20% of the votes – which translates into 29 seats in parliament.
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.’