VVD Mark Rutte SP Emile Roemer D66 Alexander Pechtold | PvdA Lodewijk Asscher PVV Geert Wilders | |
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CDA Sybrand van Haersma Buma | ||
General elections are planned to be held in the Netherlands on Wednesday, 15 March 2017 to elect all 150 members of the House of Representatives.
Contents
For a considerable time (2002–2012), every cabinet has resigned before completing its full four-year term. The 2012 elections saw the Labour Party (PvdA) and People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) go head-to-head for the position of prime minister, gathering enough seats in the process to form an absolute majority. Incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) formed a coalition government with the PvdA, ousting the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) from government, while the Party for Freedom (PVV) went back to full opposition. Because the second Rutte cabinet lacked a majority in the Senate, it has relied on the support of the Democrats 66 (D66), ChristianUnion (CU) and Reformed Political Party (SGP).
Electoral system and organisation
The House of Representatives, or Second Chamber (Tweede Kamer) is composed of 150 seats elected by proportional representation in a single nationwide constituency.
Following reports from the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) that Russian hacking groups Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear had made several attempts to hack into Dutch ministries, including the Ministry of General Affairs to gain access to secret government documents, Dutch Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk announced that votes for the election would be counted by hand, although that decision was later reversed.
Campaign
Opinion polls taken before the election showed PVV competing to be the largest party. However, all the other main parties ruled out forming a coalition with PVV, which would make it virtually impossible for Geert Wilders to become prime minister. The SP also declared that it wouldn't take part in a coalition with the VVD.
Opinion polls
The seat projections in the graphs below are continuous from September 2012 (the last general election) up to the current date. Each colored line specifies a political party; numbers on the vertical axis represent numbers of seats. These seat estimates are derived from estimates by Peilingwijzer ("polling indicator") by Tom Louwerse, a professor of political science at Leiden University; they are not strictly polling averages, but the results of a model calculating a "trajectory" for each party based on changes in support over time in between polls conducted by I&O Research, Ipsos, TNS NIPO, LISS panel, Peil, and De Stemming, and adjusting for the house effects of each individual pollster.