Voter turnout at about 14% in the Netherlands, down slightly from 2017

Voter turnout in the 2023 Dutch General Election stood at about 14 percent as of 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday. By comparison, that total was 15 percent in 2017, the last General Election to take place on a single date. There were wide differences in turnout across a range of municipalities, with about 17.5 percent of Rotterdammers submitting a ballot by noon, compared to roughly one-fourth of eligible Hilversum voters.

Some 78.7 of eligible voters took part in the 2021 election for new MPs in the lower house of Parliament. The voting took place over a three-day period due to the coronavirus pandemic. A total of 81.9 percent cast a ballot in 2017. Five years earlier, voter turnout was at 74.6 percent, similar to the 75.4 percent who voted in 2010, which led to the first Cabinet of Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

So far, about 81,000 ballots have been submitted in Rotterdam, putting that city’s voter turnout at 17.5 percent at 11:55 a.m., according to election monitoring website Opkomstenuitslag. Almost 68,000 cast a ballot in The Hague, pushing their participation rate to 19.0 percent. The first figures from Amsterdam will be released at about 1 p.m.

More than 23.5 percent of voters in Utrecht cast their ballot in the morning hours, just shy of 62,000 people in total. Meanwhile, in Eindhoven, nearly 33,000 cast a ballot in the first 4.5 hours the polls were open, putting that city’s turnout at 20.1 percent. Turnout was higher at 20.2 percent in Groningen, where over 37,000 people voted.

The Noord-Holland city of Hilversum also showed a strong 24.4 percent voter turnout rate. Nijmegen, in the southeastern portion of Gelderland, reported turnout of 22.9 percent, the same as Harderwijk, in the northern part of the province. Turnout in Tynaarlo, Drenthe, even reached 26.7 percent by noon.