Local parties attract mainly older, right-wing voters

The local parties running in the upcoming city council elections attract mainly older male voters living in smaller towns and villages. They are typically not university-educated and voted for a right-wing populist party in the parliamentary election in October, according to an opinion poll conducted by Kieskompas for Trouw.

Kieskompas found that local parties are more popular among men (57 percent) than women (43 percent), and among voters in villages rather than large cities. Young voters under the age of 35 are much less inclined to vote for a local party (15.9%), but two-thirds of those who said they would are over 50 years old. Retirees, in particular, prefer to vote local.

There is also a clear pattern in terms of political leanings. 56.3 percent of voters who said they intended to vote for a local party on March 18 identify as right-wing. Only 10 percent consider themselves left-wing. The other 33.7 percent are in the center. In the national elections, 39.5 percent of voters consider themselves right-wing, 27.4 percent left-wing, and 33 percent centrist.

Local parties attract a relatively large number of voters from the right-wing populist parties PVV, BBB, and JA21. This is partly due to these parties not really participating in municipal elections, as Ipsos I&O also concluded earlier this week. The PVV, for example, is participating in fewer than 40 municipalities next week. The same applies to JA21, BBB, and to a lesser extent, FvD.

That does not mean that most local parties are right-wing. Many local parties explicitly identify as neither left nor right, profiling themselves as transcending the traditional dividing lines.

Kieskompas found that people who vote for national parties consider the party’s ideological signature at least as important as the party’s position - they vote for a party that aligns with their political beliefs.

For voters who vote for local parties, this is much less important. They attach more importance to a party’s performance in the municipal council. The party’s stance on a single issue - opening an asylum shelter, for example - is often decisive for voters.

People who voted for PvdD, SGP, or GroenLinks-PvdA in the parliamentary elections have the least confidence in local parties. Higher-educated individuals are also underrepresented among people who intend to vote for a local party. A quarter of people who intend to vote local have a theoretical education, compared to 38 percent who intend to vote for a national party.