The results of the municipal elections again this year show gains for the local parties, as well as further fragmentation and right-wing movement within the municipal councils. Within this broad trend, the major gains of Forum for Democracy are particularly striking: the far-right party rose from 50 local seats in 2022 to almost 300 now, and obtained more than 10 percent of the votes in 41 municipalities. That is “a really strong result and above expectations,” says researcher Sjoerd van Heck of Ipsos I&O.
According to Van Heck, it is striking that FVD shows this gain in the municipal elections. Although turnout was slightly higher than in 2022 at 53.7 percent, local elections always have relatively low turnout and that is normally a problem for right-wing populist parties such as FVD. “Voters of these types of parties are more likely to stay at home, while higher educated voters of GroenLinks-PvdA or of established parties such as the CDA come to vote more loyally.”
FVD has benefited greatly from the absence of the PVV on the ballot paper in many municipalities. Geert Wilders’ party, which with 26 seats was still much larger than FVD (7 seats) in the October elections, only participated in forty municipalities, and FVD in more than a hundred. The voter survey that Ipsos I&O conducted on Wednesday around the polls shows that of the voters who voted FVD on Wednesday, almost 40 percent still voted PVV in the parliamentary elections in October. “They really mobilized that group, although you have to make the comment that you don’t know what would have happened if the PVV had participated in all those municipalities,” says Van Heck.
One percentage that stands out to him is that 5 percent of FVD voters on Wednesday still voted VVD in October. That is not a very large group, but the fact that there is traffic between FVD and VVD is, according to him, confirmation of the disappearance of the sharp boundaries between the center-right and right-wing populist bloc of voters. “During the 2023 parliamentary elections, you saw a large group of VVD members switching to Wilders for the first time. That did not or hardly happen in previous years. Now you see that a small part of VVD voters is not deterred by the extremism within FVD.”
Another explanation for FVD’s local success seems to be that the party succeeded more than other parties in turning it into a national campaign. Posters distributed throughout the country featured the image of the new party leader Lidewij de Vos, and that had some effect, the Ipsos research shows: voters of that party indicate more often than other voters that the national party leader played a role in their vote choice. And almost forty percent of FVD voters say that national positions are “the most important reason” for their vote, more than with most other national parties. If you look at all voters who voted on Wednesday, 41 percent indicate that their vote choice is based on the local positions of the party in their municipality.
Did local parties attract protest votes?
The good score of the local parties also proves that the municipal elections are truly local elections for most voters. This bloc receives about 35 percent of the votes, which means growth compared to the 31.3 percent from 2022. Compared to the House of Representatives elections, local parties are withdrawing slightly less or more than a fifth of their voters from almost all national parties; only GroenLinks-PvdA, ChristenUnie and SGP retain their voters better locally on average. “Long ago, local parties mainly attracted right-wing voters, but they now clearly attract chunks of voters from everywhere,” says Ipsos I&O researcher Maartje van de Koppel. “That shows that the large block of local parties is also becoming increasingly broader and more diffuse ideologically.”
D66 leader and Prime Minister Rob Jetten said on Wednesday evening that the win of local parties should be interpreted as a “protest vote”, but according to Van de Koppel, that is not so bad. “The profile of the voters of local parties is very average, these voters are not much more distrustful of politics. In this they differ from the FVD voters, who are much more distrustful and do actually cast a protest vote.”
Giving a national interpretation to the results of the municipal elections is difficult, apart from the striking victory of FVD. To start with, because a large majority of voters (63 percent) in the Ipsos I&O survey indicate that their opinion about the recently appointed Jetten cabinet plays no role in their vote choice. The new cabinet only started last month, so in that sense it could hardly be a popularity measurement of the minority coalition of D66, VVD and CDA. The three parties also do not show spectacular results: the CDA remains stable in terms of council seats, D66 and VVD make slight gains.
D66 in particular also tried to make the campaign national, with the relatively popular new Prime Minister Rob Jetten on campaign posters and reusing the slogan ‘It is possible’, which was successful in October. D66 has both benefited and suffered locally from the appointment of the new cabinet, sees Sjoerd van Heck. “We see that some D66 voters cite Jetten and the national party as a reason to also vote for the party locally, while other D66 members are disappointed in the right-wing cabinet policy and are partly switching to GroenLinks-PvdA.”
In total, a quarter of voters did take their opinion of the cabinet into account in their vote. Of these, 12 percent voted in favor of the cabinet, 21 percent against. The ‘against’ voters mainly include voters from populist parties such as FVD, PVV, BBB and SP, and also a small part of GroenLinks-PvdA. But it is certainly not the case that the left-wing merger party benefited massively from dissatisfaction with the cabinet policy: GroenLinks-PvdA did become the largest party nationally, but lost quite a few seats compared to 2022.
‘Where there is asylum-seeker resistance, it is fierce’
In a campaign without a very clear direction, most voters indicate that housing was the most important theme for them (51 percent), followed by safety (38 percent) and the themes of nature, traffic/public transport and the reception of asylum seekers (all around 25 percent). Voters from left to right believe, as the Ipsos I&O research shows, that their municipality should do more, for example, to build affordable homes for starters or senior housing, in order to promote mobility.
The fact that asylum reception comes in joint fourth place on the list of themes seems to contradict the great media attention that there has been in recent months for local protests against the arrival of new asylum seeker centers (azcs). In several municipalities on Wednesday, local parties that were founded in opposition to an asylum seekers’ center or explicitly profiled themselves against one won.
According to Maartje van de Koppel, it is not necessarily surprising that asylum reception as a theme does not score higher. “Where it is an issue, it is intense, but that is by no means the case in all municipalities. This percentage (26 percent) somewhat nuances the image that asylum reception is seen as a major problem everywhere in the Netherlands. But where it is an issue, parties have succeeded in mobilizing voters on the subject.”
The local unrest over asylum is also one of the explanations for the success of FVD: this issue played a major role among 65 percent of their voters, more than with many other parties. And yet the political resistance to asylum seekers’ centers is mainly in the right-wing corner and there are also enough voters in favor of receiving asylum seekers. For example, more voters are still in favor than against the dispersal law, which should guarantee a fair distribution of asylum seekers among municipalities. “Asylum remains a polarizing issue,” says Van de Koppel. “Voters’ opinions are really divided on this.”
