D66 emerged as the big winner in the exit poll with 26 parliamentary seats, a big win for the party that only won nine seats in the previous elections. Some people on social media expressed disbelief. ‘Tricky card’ and ‘I don’t know anyone who will vote for him’ were unfounded shouts online. According to sociologists Jochem Tolsma and Tobias Stark, this is not surprising: especially when the results are disappointing, it is human to react with surprise.
“People generally interact with others who are similar to them,” says Tolsma, a sociologist at Radboud University. “Because you mainly encounter like-minded people in your own environment, it is easy to get the idea that your worldview is shared by many more people. If an election result does not match your own ideas, it can be very unexpected.”
Tobias Stark, sociologist at Utrecht University, agrees. “We draw conclusions based on our immediate environment.” The reasoning that you cannot believe a result because you don’t know anyone who voted for the winning party is therefore explainable, according to Stark. “Even though we all know very well that there are people outside our circles who think differently than us,” he adds.
“Confidence in democracy is still relatively high here.”
It becomes a different story when people are not only surprised, but also think that the election was rigged, Stark explains. Sociologists mainly see such reactions among people who already have low confidence in politics. “And when the result is completely different than you expected, the step towards distrust is made easier,” says Stark.
Tolsma sees that this type of distrust occurs more often on the right side of the political spectrum. “There is generally lower trust in political institutions there. But I cannot imagine that there are many people in the Netherlands who think that the results have been falsified,” he says. “Confidence in democracy is still relatively high here.”
