Netherlands Provincial elections 2015 — Results
Election day: March 18, 2015
- People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD): 15.92%
- Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA): 14.71%
- Democrats 66 (D66): 12.46%
- Party for Freedom (PVV): 11.73%
- Socialist Party (SP): 11.65%
- Labour Party (PvdA): 10.08%
- GreenLeft (GL): 5.35%
- Christian Union (CU): 4.01%
Turnout: 47.76%
About this election
How the voting works
Each of the twelve provinces elects its council by proportional representation, with the number of seats scaled to the province's population. The councils run regional government — spatial planning, transport, nature and provincial finances — but their best-known function is to form the electoral college for the Senate, where each councillor's vote is weighted by the population they represent. Because the Senate can block legislation, a government that loses its provincial base loses its working majority in the upper house, which is exactly what happened in 2015.
Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.
In numbers
- 1.21 points separated People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) from Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA).
- The top two shared 30.63% of the vote between them, and 7 lists cleared 5%.
- Support for People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) ranged from 18.58% in Noord-Holland to 9.15% in Groningen — a spread of 9.43 points across 12 regions, and it led in 7 of 12.
- Turnout of 47.76% is the lowest of the 3 provincial electionss covered here since 2015.
Calculated from the official figures on this page and from the other elections of this type in our archive.
Understanding this election
- How We Check an Election Figure — the checks every number passes before publication
- How Live Election Data Is Collected and Verified — from ballot box to published figure
- Why Official Results Sometimes Take Weeks — the stages between the count and the legal result