Polling places open across the Netherlands in the 2023 Dutch General Election
Workers and volunteers at 9,823 polling stations across the country are ready for Netherlands residents to come cast their votes in the 2023 general elections. Most of the polling stations will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. The one at the Tuin van Kapitein Rommel in Castricum was the first to open its doors at midnight.
According to the government, 9,602 of the polling stations will have the regular hours today. The 221 others have non-standard hours. Several opened at 6:00 a.m. for early voters, including at the Den Bosch railway station. Multiple others will open at 6:30 a.m. There are 42 polling stations located at train stations and 56 mobile ones.
The election is for the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, with 1,128 candidates from 26 parties competing for one of the 150 seats available. There are 720 men running for parliament this year, 404 women, and four non-binary candidates, including Ines Kostíc from the animal rights party PvdD.
The party winning the most seats in the election traditionally gets the first chance to form a coalition government. According to the I&O Research poll two days before the election, GroenLinks-PvdA, VVD, and PVV were statistically tied to become the largest party with 27 or 26 seats each. The NSC came in close fourth with 21 virtual seats.
The 150 seats in the Tweede Kamer are currently divided among 17 parties and three politicians who left their party after the previous election. One of these independent parliamentarians is Pieter Omtzigt, who left the CDA after a conflict during the formation of the Cabinet in 2021. He is participating in this year’s election with his own party, Nieuw Sociaal Contract (NSC), which is projected to become one of the five largest parties in the Tweede Kamer.
Over 40 of the current parliamentarians are stepping down after this election, including the current Tweede Kamer president Vera Bergkamp, CDA faction leader Pieter Heerma, and DENK leader Farid Azarkan.