It was already clear on Wednesday when the polling stations closed that the party of the popular Member of Parliament Caroline van der Plas had convincingly won the elections for the Provincial Council elections and the water boards. Now that almost all the votes have been counted, the victory turns out to be even sweeter with an extra Senate seat.
GroenLinks and PvdA together 15
According to the latest count, D66 has to hand in one seat: the democrats fall from 6 seats to 5. GroenLinks and PvdA, which will form one group in the senate, will end up with 8 and 7 seats together at 15 seats. That is 1 more than the two parties now have in the senate. The VVD is in third place with 10 seats.
The new prognosis is calculated on the basis of the provisional results of all municipalities, on 95 percent of the votes counted in Amsterdam and the provisional results of Dutch people living abroad, which the municipality of The Hague provided on Sunday. The results of the people who voted on the BES islands have not yet been received, but this concerns relatively few voters.
In the new prognosis, the coalition of VVD (10), D66 (5), CDA (5) and CU (2) will have 22 seats, compared to 32 seats now. 38 seats are needed for a majority in the Senate, which has 75 seats.
The coalition already lacked a majority in the senate and now has even fewer seats. This means that the coalition must gather more support from other parties in order to get policy through.
Restzetel
The rest of the senate, according to the new prognosis, will consist of: PVV (5, remains the same), PvdD (4, was 3), SP (3, was 4), JA21 (3), FVD (2). 50PLUS, SGP, Volt and Independent Senate Faction (OSF) each get 1 seat. The last remaining seat may go to the PVV or the SGP.
The CDA, which lost heavily in the provincial elections on Wednesday, will receive considerably fewer Senate seats. The party had 9 and there are 5 left. The other coalition parties each lose two seats: VVD goes from 12 to 10, D66 from 7 to 5 and ChristenUnie drops from 4 to 2.
Forum for Democracy, the party that became the largest in the Senate from scratch with 12 seats in 2019, has won 2 Senate seats. Incidentally, the party had already lost 11 senators, because they split into three other factions.
The new members of Parliament and electoral colleges will elect the senators at the end of May. Incidentally, Members of Parliament are not obliged to vote for a candidate of their own party, but this usually happens. In addition, the parties can still make agreements with each other to win Senate seats.
