Wilders' hate speech ruling gains PVV support in polls

Far-right party PVV gained two virtual seats in Maurice de Hond's weekly poll after party leader Geert Wilders was found guilty in the hate speech trial against him, but not punished by the court. The PvdA also gained one seat after Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher was elected party leader.

The poll was done after these two major events in Dutch politics. The seats gained by the PVV and PvdA were lost from the VVD, CDA and ChristenUnie. There is now a 13 seat gap between the PVV (36 virtual seats) and VVD (23) - the two parties with the most support now in the polls. Five weeks ago the PVV and VVD were at 27 seats each. The PvdA now stands at 10 seats.

The PvdA may be able to count on slightly more support now that Asscher is taking over from Diederik Samsom as party leader. A small 4 percent of voters indicated that they will consider switching to the PvdA now that Asscher is leader. The majority of all voters (48 percent) believe Asscher to be a good choice for PvdA leader. Only among PVV voters does the majority not have confidence in the current Deputy Prime Minister- 38 percent think he was a bad choice, 37 percent think he was a good choice and the other 26 percent have no opinion on the matter.

With the D66 and CDA dropping one seat each this week, the parties standing between 3rd and 8th place regarding the amount of support, now all have between 10 and 14 seats. That is less than 10 percent of the electorate each. Something that's never happened before on this poll, according to De Hond.