Welcome to this election blog
In this blog, the editors of NRC keep track of the reactions, consequences and the still missing results of the Provincial Council elections on Wednesday.
The BoerBurgerBeweging of Caroline van der Plas has booked a huge victory and has become the largest party in many provinces from scratch. The actual results that came in during the night confirmed the picture of the exit polls on election night. The BBB’s victory is even bigger than that of the Forum for Democracy four years ago.
GroenLinks is the largest party in many large cities. The coalition parties VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie surrender almost everywhere. Forum for Democracy saw almost all its seats evaporate.
The distribution of seats in the Senate based on the actual results received so far corresponds to that of the Ipsos exit poll on Wednesday evening. It depends on whether BBB or the GroenLinks/PvdA combination will become the largest in the Senate. Both are on fifteen seats. The VVD falls from the twelve seats of four years ago to ten seats and is therefore the third party. In addition to the BBB, the other newcomers JA’21 and Volt also won seats in the Senate, three and two respectively.
According to BBB leader Caroline van der Plas, the voter has clearly made his voice heard. “The coalition should take this very seriously,” she told NOS. “If this happened to me, I would be gone.”
The counting of votes was much slower than in previous years. The Ministry of the Interior sent instructions to municipalities around 2:30 a.m. that wanted to temporarily suspend counting because the counters were getting too tired. That is allowed, but then an official report must be drawn up stating how many valid voting passes have been received, how many valid proxies there are and how many valid voter passes there are. The voting passes, ballot papers and other voting documents then had to be sealed and secured to the municipality.
Read here: the blog of election day, evening and night back