Exit poll: Landslide BBB victory, coalition parties lose heavily in Senate | provincial elections

Mar 15, 2023 at 10:02 PMUpdate: 10 minutes ago

The BoerBurgerBeweging is the big winner of these elections. Caroline van der Plas’ party may win fifteen seats in the Senate. Based on this exit poll, the coalition parties come together on 26 seats. That is twelve seats short of a majority in the senate.

VVD, D66, CDA and ChristenUnie together lose about eight seats. The CDA in particular has to take a big blow. The Christian Democrats may lose five of the currently nine seats in the Senate. The exit poll often gives a good picture of the final result, but can be one or two seats off.

According to the exit poll, GroenLinks and PvdA together get fifteen seats. That is one seat more than the parties now have in the senate. The two left-wing parties will soon form a group in the new Senate.

In recent years, the cabinet has not had a majority in the Senate. They often leaned on GroenLinks or PvdA for legislation. Based on this exit poll, the combination of these two parties can also help the coalition achieve a majority. But there are more options: for example, the cabinet can also look at the BBB.

Van der Plas calls the result “overwhelming”. The BBB celebrates the result in Bathmen in Overijssel. Although it is still an exit poll, according to Van der Plas it is clear “that one cannot ignore the BBB”.

Hoekstra: ‘This is an extremely bitter pill’

CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra calls the result an “extremely bitter pill”. “It’s a bad result, worse than we all hoped.” The Christian Democrats also lost a lot in the previous parliamentary elections. They haven’t found their way up since then.

Hoekstra already indicated before the elections that he did not intend to step down as party leader. He wants to regain trust in the coming years.

VVD leader Mark Rutte and D66 leader Sigrid Kaag congratulated Van der Plas in a first response. “She seems to have achieved a great victory. I want to congratulate her on that,” said Rutte. The VVD will probably lose two seats, but it is still the largest party in the Senate after BBB.

In Overijssel, almost one in three voters vote for BBB

Earlier in the evening, the BBB already celebrated victory in Overijssel. In the province, the party wins sharply with more than 31 percent of the vote, an earlier exit poll showed. That means that about one in three voters voted for Van der Plas’ party.

In the Provincial Council of Overijssel there may be seventeen members of the BBB. They stand head and shoulders above the rest. CDA, VVD and GroenLinks follow at an appropriate distance and all three win four seats. The BBB has also become the largest in North Brabant. In North Holland, an exit poll showed that it is still a neck-and-neck race with the VVD.

All votes have now been counted in Drenthe, Flevoland and Zeeland. BBB has become the largest in all three provinces. In Drenthe even a third of the votes went to the party.

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