Tenth of Dutch won't vote in parliamentary election over Covid concerns

About 10 percent of Dutch voters say they will not go to the polls for the parliamentary election in March if the coronavirus situation is the same as it is now. They worry about becoming infected, newspaper AD reports based on a poll by Maurice de Hond of Peil.nl.

Of those who voted in the 2017 parliamentary elections, 10 percent said that they will "definitely not" or "probably not" go to the polls this year due to possible risk of coronavirus contamination. Women and the elderly are more hesitant than men and young people.

This could affect the election results, De Hond said to the newspaper. "This can result in one seat more or less for various parties. And with the small, new parties, it can mean that they just do or do not pass the quota and therefore enter parliament or not," he said to the newspaper.

Diederik Gommers, head of the Netherlands' association of intensive care NVIC and member of the Outbreak Management Team that advises the government on how to handle the pandemic, thinks that the OMT may advise the government to postpone the elections.

But the chance that this will happen is small. The cabinet is committed to having elections happen on schedule at all costs, according to the newspaper. "We are confident that the elections can always go ahead," Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations previously said.