Netherlands Provincial elections 2015 — Results

Background

The 2015 Dutch provincial elections, held on 18 March 2015, chose the members of the twelve Provincial Councils (Provinciale Staten). Beyond their regional importance, these elections carry a decisive national consequence: the newly elected provincial councillors, three months later, elect the 75 members of the Senate (Eerste Kamer), the upper house of the Dutch parliament. The 2015 vote was therefore widely treated as a mid-term verdict on Mark Rutte's second cabinet, a coalition of the VVD and the Labour Party (PvdA).

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.

The outcome

The two governing parties were both punished. The VVD remained narrowly the largest party nationally on 15.92%, but the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) drew level with it on seats (89 each), recovering as the main opposition force, while D66 (12.46%) and the Socialist Party (11.65%) also made gains. The big loser was the Labour Party, which fell to 10.08% — a continuation of the slide that would culminate in its 2017 general-election collapse. Wilders' PVV took 11.73%. The combined result left the VVD–PvdA government well short of a Senate majority.

Turnout and regional patterns

Turnout was 47.76%, typical of the lower participation seen in Dutch sub-national elections. The map of provincial winners showed the country's familiar regional cleavages: the VVD led in most of the Randstad and the wealthier provinces, the CDA topped the poll across the Catholic south and the rural east — Limburg, Overijssel, Friesland (Fryslân) and Zeeland — and the Socialist Party again came first in Groningen. The map above shows the largest party in each province; click any province for the full breakdown.

What followed

In the May 2015 Senate election the Rutte II government was left with only 21 of 75 seats for its two coalition parties, forcing it to negotiate ad hoc majorities with opposition parties for the rest of its term. The provincial elections thus had an outsized effect on national policy, underlining how the indirect link between regional and Senate elections shapes Dutch governance.

Source

Official results from the Electoral Council (Kiesraad) — verkiezingsuitslagen.nl. The provincial map is built from the Kiesraad's per-province figures.

Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.