Eindhoven first large city to finish vote counting; VVD largest party, D66 2nd

Eindhoven, the fifth largest municipality in the Netherlands, was the first of the large cities to finish counting its votes in the 2021 parliamentary election on Thursday morning. The VVD again received the most votes in the city, and the D66 the second most, though the difference between the two parties shrank significantly. Nearly 124 thousand people voted in Eindhoven, ANP reports.

The VVD received 19.7 percent of the Eindhoven votes, compared to 18.8 percent four years ago. The D66 rose from 15.8 percent to 19 percent of the votes. The difference between the two parties now consists of only 887 votes.

The PVV is still the third largest party in Eindhoven, but dropped from 12.4 percent to 9.6 percent of the city's votes. GroenLinks also suffered a blow, falling from 11.9 percent to 7.5 percent. FvD climbed from 1.7 percent to 4.7 percent of the votes. New party Volt also got 4.7 percent - only 72 votes fewer than FvD.

The other large cities and some other smaller municipalities still have to finish counting their votes, but it is already clear that the VVD took the majority of municipalities. Just before 7:00 a.m. on Thursday, the VVD was the biggest party in over 200 of the 356 Dutch municipalities, according to ANP. At the time, the results were in for about 250 of the municipalities.

The VVD is now largest in at least 18 municipalities where the CDA was largest four years ago. Mark Rutte's party also took over at least seven municipalities from the PVV, including Geert Wilders' hometown of Venlo, and three from the SP, including former SP leader Emile Roemer's hometown of Boxmeer. So far the VVD only had to cede six municipalities, all of which went to the D66, including Zwolle, Arnhem, Haarlem, and Deventer.

In 2017, the VVD was the largest party in 285 of the 391 municipalities. In 2012, the party won 282 of 418 municipalities.