Left-leaning political parties gain support in latest Dutch election poll

While it does not seem that the first televised election debate on RTL on Sunday had much affect on the polls, Maurice de Hond's latest poll does show left-leaning parties CDA and PvdA each gaining slightly more support and going up one seat. Right-wing PVV's support continues to dwindle slowly. Elderly party 50Plus took quite a blow this past week, losing almost half of its support.

According to the Peilingwijzer, which combines data from the major political polls, the PVV is now between 22 and 26 seats, just below the VVD's 23 to 27 seats. The PVV's downward trend seems to be slowing down, but is not yet over, Tom Louwerse of Peilingwijzer said to NOS. The VVD has been at about the same level for weeks, possibly because it's benefiting from the PVV's loss of support.

Over the past month the CDA gained some ground in the polls. The party now stands at between 17 and 19 seats. D66 and GroenLinks are both at between 16 and 18 seats. And SP and PvdA are also equal at between 12 and 14 seats.

Of the six polls that Peilingwijzer uses for data, only EenVandaag, De Hond's Peil.nl and LISS polled their respondents after the first election debate on Sunday, in which the CDA, GroenLinks, D66, PvdA and SP participated. At EenVandaag the SP gained support, but not with Peil.nl and LISS. At Peil.nl the CDA and PvdA each gained support.

According to Louwerse, it is unlikely that those three polls missed any large effects the debate could have had. "In that sense you could say that the RTL debate did not cause major changes in the political preferences."

50Plus lost significant support this past week. On Peilingwijzer the party now has between 5 and 7 seats, a decrease of three seats within a week. On Tuesday the party announced that leader Henk Krol will take it more slowly in the rest of the campaign, following a number of unfortunate public appearances. According to the party, he is slowing down for his health.

50Plus is now equal to ChristenUnie on Peilingwijzer. The PvdD gained some support his past month and is now at between 4 and 6 seats. The SGP has between 3 and 5, FvD and DENK are both between 0 and 2 and VNL stands between 0 and 1.

The parliamentary elections will be held two weeks from now, on March 15th.