Poll: Slight drop for PVV after Wilders suspends election campaign over terror threat

With two weeks to go until the parliamentary election, there is little movement in the poll by EenVandaag and Verian. The PVV dropped slightly after Geert Wilders suspended the far-right party’s election campaign. GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, and JA21 showed slight gains.

Wilders’ party remains the largest at 31 seats in the poll. In recent months, the far-right party has fluctuated between 30 and 35 seats. In the current Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, the PVV has 37 seats.

The survey of 1,566 voters in the Netherlands was conducted from Friday, when it emerged PVV leader Geert Wilders may have been on a Belgian terrorist group’s list of potential assassination targets. The survey concluded on Monday, a day before Dutch authorities said there was no evidence to support the claim that Wilders was facing increased threats.

Almost all people who plan to vote for the PVV this year (96 percent) understand Wilders’ decision to suspend the election campaign and not participate in the two recent debates. However, 60 percent of PVV voters do consider it important that he debates with other party leaders before the election.

People who voted for the PVV in the previous parliamentary election in 2023 are slightly more critical of Wilders' decision. 13 percent don’t understand Wilders’ absence. Voters for other parties are even more critical, questioning whether Wilders is abusing the situation to avoid being questioned about his political plans like the other party leaders.

GroenLinks-PvdA and CDA are the second and third largest parties in the polls. Frans Timmermans’ left-wing combination now has 25 seats, up two compared to the previous poll. Henri Bontenbal’s Christian Democrats remained stable at 23.

Some distance behind the top three are the D66, VVD, and JA21. D66 gained three seats in two weeks. The VVD remained stable at 14, and JA21 is continuing its steady upward trend. The party now stands at 13 seats in the polls, four more than six weeks ago, and 12 more than JA21’s one seat in the current parliament.

All the other parties have five or fewer seats. SP dropped from seven to four, FvD stands at five, and 50Plus stands at two. The party representing senior citizens’ interests reappeared in the polls last month after several years of not having enough support for a seat in parliament.

The researchers stressed that many voters are still uncertain about who they will vote for on October 29. 48 percent are still unsure about who to vote for or even whether to vote at all. People still dithering between parties are mainly considering the CDA, VVD, and D66, so they might cause movement in the top group, but definitely in the middle group of parties.

A total of 150 spots are up for grabs in the Tweede Kamer election, with the political factions expected to face a complicated period to piece together a governing coalition comprised of several parties. The EenVandaag survey has a statistical margin of two Tweede Kamer seats for the largest parties, and one seat for the smaller parties, though the news outlet did not define the threshold separating large and small.