2014 European Parliament election in the Netherlands


The 2014 European Parliament election for the election of the delegation from the Netherlands was held on 22 May 2014.
This is the 8th time the elections have been held for the European elections in the Netherlands.

Background

Voting and election organisation

Active voting right

To cast a vote in elections for the European Parliament. The voter should:
Non-Dutch citizens who are nationals of other Member States of the European Union may vote
at the election of the European Parliament, provided that they:
Dutch nationals abroad have to register to vote for the elections to the European Parliament. Upon registration request, they must indicate whether they are voting by letter,
by proxy, or in person at a polling station in the Netherlands.
Dutch nationals living in another EU Member State must make a statement that they have not voted in the Member State in which they reside.
Dutch residents of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten have the same required as other Dutch living abroad.
Dutch residents on Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba have no need to register, because these islands are part of the Netherlands. They may, as in other Dutch municipalities, vote at their polling stations.
The number of granted requests for registration in 2014 was 23,799 individuals. This was down from 39,601 registered international voters in 2009.
Of these registered voters, 21,017 indicated they wanted to vote by mail, 1,804 requested to vote in the Netherlands itself at a polling station, and 978 wanted to grant power of attorney to someone in the Netherlands.

Passive voting right

To stand for election, a candidate should:
Non-Dutch candidates from other Member States of the European Union must, in addition, be an actual resident in the Netherlands and not be excluded from the right
to be elected in the Member State of which they are a national.

Organisation of elections

In elections for the European Parliament, the national electoral districts play no role in the nomination. The Netherlands consists of a single electoral district.
Political parties, therefore, take part in the elections with only a single candidate list.
Although the national electoral districts do play an important role in processing the election results.
The principal polling station of each constituency determines the vote total of the constituency.
The results of the vote are recorded in an official document and transferred to the Electoral Council.
The Electoral Council, in its role as the central electoral committee, then determines the result of the Netherlands' distribution of seats.
The transfer of the official recorded votes to the Electoral Council took place in 18 constituencies on Monday, 26 May 2014.
On Tuesday, 27 May, this transfer occurred for the two remaining constituencies where the municipalities Raalte, Kampen, and Ouder-Amstel, experimented with a centralised counting of votes.

Casting a vote

A voter could cast their vote at a polling station of their choice within their own district. At the
casting their vote, they could identify themselves with an identity document which is considered valid even if it has expired within the last 5 years.
Voters who voted in the election for the European Parliament in 2014 from outside the Netherlands experimented with a new model ballot.
In this new ballot, parties were allowed to show the party logo above their candidates if it had been registered in advance with the Electoral Council.

Participation of political groups

On Monday, 14 April 2014, the Electoral Council had a public hearing on the validity of the
lists of candidates for the election of the Dutch seats for the European Parliament.
The candidate list of the Women's Party was declared invalid because the required deposit to participate was not paid.
Furthermore, the following candidates of the Party for the Animals were deleted because their documentation was incomplete and, as such, could not participate in the election:
In the same public hearing on 14 April 2014, the Electoral Council also numbered the lists of candidates. The parties
who had obtained one or more seats in 2009 at the last election to the European Parliament were given a number based on the number of votes that the parties had achieved in the previous election.
These totalled 8 candidate lists. The party with the most votes got number 1 and the rest were listed accordingly. The list numbers for the remaining 11 candidates were decided by a lottery.
The official order and names of candidate lists:

Common lists

A common list consists of 2 distinct parties which are sharing the same candidate list. The Christian Union and SGP formed a common list Christian Union-SGP for the European Parliament election.

Electoral alliances

Several parties formed an electoral alliance.
  1. CDA/European People's Party and ChristenUnie-SGP
  2. PvdA/European Social-Democrats and GreenLeft

    Election day

Traditionally, all elections are held on Wednesday in the Netherlands.
Sunday is not an option because it's a resting day for Christians, while Friday and Saturday are impossible, because of the Sabbath. Monday is also impossible, because then all preparation for an election would need to happen on the weekend. That leaves Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as possible election days. Many polling stations are located in schools, therefore, Wednesday is chosen because it is usually the quietest day of the week for classes.
However, the European Parliament Elections run from Thursday to Sunday across the entire European Union. Therefore, Thursday is the election day for the European Parliament Elections.

Treaty of Lisbon

According to the Treaty of Lisbon, the Netherlands was awarded 26 seats in the European parliament. This is one more than the election of 2009.
The last elections were held when the treaty was not yet in effect, because not all member states had ratified the treaty.
The treaty came into effect during the last session of the European Parliament. The additional seat was then awarded to the Party of Freedom on 9 October 2011 based on the results of the 2009 election. This increased the numbers of seats for the PVV from 4 to 5 for the 2009–2014 session.

Campaign

Campaign posters

Polls

Poll results are listed in the tables below in reverse chronological order. The highest figure in each survey is displayed in bold type, and the background is shaded in the colour the party. In the instance that there is a tie, then no figure is shaded.

Seats

Percentages

Results

Turnout

Turnout was with 37.32%, which is a little higher than in 2009.
A total of 12,815,496 people were entitled to vote. Of these 4,782,251 did participated in the election.
Municipality with the highest voter turnout:
  1. Schiermonnikoog: 70.95%
Municipality with the lowest voter turnout:
  1. Sint Eustatius: 7.44%

    Seat assignment

Electoral quota

The electoral quota is the number of votes needed for one seat.
It is the total valid number of votes divided by the number of seats.
For this election it was 4,753,746 valid votes, divided by 26 seats.
The electoral quota was established as: 182.836

Electoral alliances

The results of the electoral alliances. Both parties of both alliances reached the electoral quota and are eligible for remainder seats.

Assigning full seats

Full seats are assigned by number of votes divided by the electoral quota.
Electoral alliances are marked as a letter, instead of a number.
Any seats left over are not yet assigned to a specific party.

Remainder seats

The remaining, or left over, seats are awarded sequentially to the lists with the highest average number of votes per seat.
Only lists that reached the electoral quota are eligible.
ListRemainder seat 1Remainder seat 2Remainder seat 3Remainder seat 4Total
A 181,101155,229155,229155,2292
B 155,671155,671155,671129,7261
2158,278158,278126,622126,6221
4142,794142,794142,794142,794
5147,165147,165147,165147,165
7152,693152,693152,693152,693
18100,127100,127100,127100,127
Assigned toA2BA

The election committee also calculated what would have happened without electoral alliances. In that case the CDA – European People's Party would have 4 seats instead of 5 and the Socialist Party 3 seats instead of 2.

Awarding seats within electoral alliances

To decide the seats per party for electoral alliances, the combination quota is first determined.
Combination quota for electoral alliances are determined by the total number valid votes divided by the awarded seats.
The party with the most votes left after the full seats are assigned gets the seat remaining.
List A
For list A, there were 1,086,609 votes divided by 7 seats.
The combination quota was established as: 155,229 votes
List B
For list B, there were 778,357 votes divided by 5 seats.
The combination quota was established as: 155,671 votes
Summary:
The Christian Democratic Appeal got the most seats and was seen as the winner of the 2014 elections, although it lost the biggest percentage of votes and Democrats 66 received more votes. The Christian Democratic Appeal got an extra seat, thanks to their electoral alliance with Christian Union-SGP. The euro-sceptic PVV was the biggest loser of the 2014 elections, though it only lost 1 seat.
Contrary to other European countries, the euro-sceptic movement did worse than previous elections.

European groups

Summary:
EPPS&DECRALDEGUE/NGLG-EFAEFDDENF
Total
5 3 2 4
3 		2
1 		2 4 26

Elected members

23 members were directly elected by preference votes, though 28 members got enough preference votes.

To be elected by preference votes, 10% of the electoral quota is needed.
The electoral quota was 182,836. 10% of 182,836 = 18,284 votes.
Not all candidates could be appointed because either, the party did not get enough seats, or they got no seats.
Below are all the elected members of European parliament for the Netherlands. Members elected by preference votes are in bold.
The following 26 MEPs were officially announced by the Central Electoral Commission.
Democrats 66 – ALDE
  1. Sophie in 't Veld, by 568,185 votes
  2. Marietje Schaake, by 41,236 votes
  3. Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, by 31,326 votes
  4. Matthijs van Miltenburg, by 16,698 votes
CDA – European People's Party
  1. Esther de Lange, by 415,011 votes
  2. Annie Schreijer-Pierik, by 113,123 votes
  3. Wim van de Camp, by 37,715 votes
  4. Jeroen Lenaers, by 36,428 votes
  5. Lambert van Nistelrooij, by 32,970 votes
PVV
  1. Geert Wilders, by 290,239 votes
  2. Marcel de Graaff, by 276,680 votes
  3. Vicky Maeijer, by 26,491 votes
  4. Olaf Stuger, by 4.021 votes
VVD
  1. Hans van Baalen, by 358,029 votes
  2. Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, by 86,237 votes
  3. Jan Huitema, by 26,031 votes
SP
  1. Dennis de Jong, by 300,782 votes
  2. Anne-Marie Mineur, by 52,187 votes
P.v.d.A./European Social Democrats
  1. Paul Tang, by 183,296 votes
  2. Agnes Jongerius, by 170,119 votes
  3. Kati Piri, by 10,351 votes
Christian Union-SGP
  1. Peter van Dalen, by 253,620 votes
  2. Bas Belder, by 53,995 votes
GreenLeft
  1. Bas Eickhout, by 184,154 votes
  2. Judith Sargentini, by 91,745 votes
Party for the Animals
  1. Anja Hazekamp, by 131,093 votes
Members not elected, but enough preference votes:
Below is a list of members of the European Parliament for the period 2014–2019 as a result of this election.

Mutations

2014