Turnout: 50.99%
About this election
The 2022 Dutch municipal elections, held on 16 March 2022, again confirmed the dominance of independent local parties at the grassroots of Dutch democracy and were notable for a record-low turnout. Held just weeks after Mark Rutte's fourth cabinet had finally taken office following the longest government formation in Dutch history, the elections doubled as an early gauge of the national mood.
As in 2018, each municipality elected its council by proportional representation, with seats scaled to population and a mix of national-party branches and purely local lists competing. The councils then choose the municipal executive of aldermen. The combined vote of the many hundreds of independent local lists is reported here as a single "Local parties" total, reflecting their collective weight rather than any unified organisation.
Local parties won 31.28% of the vote — a new high — and around 3,000 council seats, extending their long-term advance. Among the national parties the VVD (11.70%) and CDA (11.21%) again led, followed by D66 (8.81%), GroenLinks (8.49%) and the Labour Party (7.85%). In several cities GroenLinks and Labour, increasingly cooperating, performed strongly, while the established Christian-democratic and liberal parties continued their slow erosion. The newer national parties made only limited inroads at the local level, where personal reputation and local issues dominate.
Turnout fell to 50.99%, among the lowest ever recorded for Dutch municipal elections, reflecting voter fatigue after the drawn-out national coalition talks and the lingering effects of the pandemic. Local parties topped the vote in every province, overwhelmingly so in Limburg (over 46%) and North Brabant, and least so in the more nationally aligned provinces of the Randstad. The map above shows the leading party (or the aggregate of local parties) in each province; click any province for the full breakdown.
The low turnout and the continued surge of local parties were widely read as signs of disengagement from national party politics and growing distance between citizens and "The Hague" — sentiments that would erupt a year later in the BBB provincial landslide and the radical-right victory in the 2023 general election. Local coalition negotiations across the country produced a patchwork of executives in the months that followed.
Official results from the Electoral Council (Kiesraad) — verkiezingsuitslagen.nl. The provincial map aggregates the Kiesraad's municipal results to province level.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.