Thursday, March 22, 2018 - 11:10

Greens the biggest party in Amsterdam, Utrecht; CDA largest nationwide

GroenLinks won big in the municipal elections and is now the largest party in cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht. With all votes in 325 out of 335 municipalities counted, it seems almost certain that the CDA will remain the biggest party in the Netherlands, RTL Nieuws reports.

GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver called Wednesday a "historic evening". The party got almost 20 percent of the Amsterdam votes, compared to 10.6 percent last municipal elections. This is "an important step towards the broad people's party" that GroenLinks wants to become, Klaver said, according to the broadcaster.

For a time it seemed that the VVD would take the position of biggest national party over from the CDA, but wit 97.5 percent of the votes counted the VVD is 188 seats behind the CDA, according to the broadcaster.

The D66 suffered major losses in the municipal elections. "We have surrendered a little", D66 leader Alexander Pechtold said on Wednesday night. "We had gold, but now we have silver in many municipalities." He expressed his concern about the fragmentation of municipal politics, that will make coalition formation more difficult.

ChristenUnie, the fourth government party, remained stable in many places. Leader Gert-Jan Segers is "very happy that we have retained the trust".

Geert Wilders' anti-Islam party PVV won seats in each one of the 30 municipalities the party participated in.

Pro-diversity party DENK, participating in the municipal elections for the first time this year, also performed well. The party won seats in 13 of the 14 municipalities it participated in. Only in Alkmaar did DENK not get enough votes for a seat on the council, according to the Volkskrant.

DENK's biggest victory was in Schiedam, where the party got 11.7 percent of the votes and four council seats, making it the biggest party in the municipality after the VVD. In Rotterdam DENK got 7.2 percent of the votes. "It means that the political landscape is changing, that groups are claiming their place", DENK leader Tunahan Kuzu said to RTL.