Who Came First Where: Dutch Elections by Municipality, 1937–2025

The Biggest Colour Is Not Always the Winner

At the Dutch general election of 29 October 2025, D66 and the PVV both won 26 seats, and D66 finished ahead by 29,668 votes, the first time in its history that it became the largest party. On this map, though, the biggest colour of 2025 is the very dark navy of the PVV: it came first in 158 of the 342 municipalities and covers nearly half the land, while the green of D66 covers about a sixth. That gap between votes and colour runs through all ninety years on the map, and it is half of what the map has to tell.

For 25 elections to the Tweede Kamer, the House of Representatives, from 1937 to 2025, the map shows which party got the most votes in each municipality (gemeente). Every patch is all the municipalities where one party came first, drawn on the borders of that election year, so the map also shows the long wave of municipal mergers: about 1,056 municipalities in 1937, 863 in 1972, 496 in 2002 and 342 today. A large rural municipality counts as much as Amsterdam and takes up far more of the map, so read the colours as a map of where each party was strongest, not of how many people voted for it.

Pillars on the Map (1937–1967)

In 1937, at the last election before the war, Dutch society was divided into pillars (zuilen): Catholics, orthodox Protestants, socialists and liberals each had their own schools, newspapers, broadcasters, trade unions and party, and most people voted for the party of their own pillar. Voting was compulsory, so nearly everyone did. The Roomsch-Katholieke Staatspartij (RKSP) won 31 of the 100 seats and came first in 499 of the 1,056 municipalities: almost all of North Brabant and Limburg, the Catholic countryside of Twente, and the Catholic pockets of Holland such as the Westland, the bulb district and Volendam. The SDAP, the social democrats, with 23 seats, took the big cities and much of Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe. The Protestant vote was split. The Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (ARP, 17 seats), the party of the orthodox Reformed churches, came first in places such as Dokkum, Hoogeveen and Kampen, and the Christelijk-Historische Unie (CHU, 8 seats), rooted in the Dutch Reformed Church, held the Veluwe from Barneveld to Elburg and the coastal village of Katwijk.

The liberals, the governing party of the 19th century, had almost vanished at municipal level: the Vrijzinnig-Democratische Bond came first in about fifteen patches of the map, most of them in North Holland north of Amsterdam, and the Liberale Staatspartij in four. The Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB), which entered parliament with four seats and 4.2% of the vote, came first in one small patch in the north-east, and the Communists in two, among them Finsterwolde in the Groningen Oldambt.

After the war the map barely moved for twenty years. The Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP) took over from the RKSP and came first in between 444 and 465 municipalities at every election from 1946 to 1963. The Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), founded in 1946 from the SDAP, the Vrijzinnig-Democratische Bond and the Christelijk-Democratische Unie, inherited the north and the cities, and some of what the liberal democrats had held, such as Terschelling, turned PvdA red with them. In 1956, when the house grew from 100 to 150 seats, the PvdA won 50 against the KVP's 49. The two Protestant parties shrank to the Veluwe, parts of Friesland, the Alblasserwaard and the South Holland islands, and in 1952 the orange of the SGP took Staphorst. By 1963 the KVP and the PvdA each covered 39.9% of the land.

Red Villages, Orange Villages

Some places hardly ever changed. In Finsterwolde, a village of farm labourers on the heavy clay of the Oldambt, the Communist Party (CPN) came first at all thirteen elections from 1937 to 1982, longer than anywhere else, and neighbouring Beerta voted Communist most of the time too. In 1946, when the CPN won 10 seats on its record in the wartime resistance, its dark red also showed up in Delfzijl and the Zaan district. From 1986 the Oldambt voted PvdA, in 2017 SP, in 2021 VVD, and in 2023 and 2025 PVV, one of the longest journeys on the map.

The orange of the Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP), the strict Calvinist party founded in 1918, traces the Dutch Bible Belt from Zeeland to the north of Overijssel: Tholen and Reimerswaal, Neder-Betuwe around Kesteren, Nunspeet on the Veluwe, Rijssen, Genemuiden, Staphorst and the former island of Urk. The party has never won more than three seats, yet it came first somewhere at 23 of the 25 elections, all except 2003 and 2006, when the CDA took its villages for two elections. Staphorst voted SGP at every election from 1952 on except those two, and Barneveld joined the orange belt in 2017.

The VVD, founded in 1948, also came first somewhere at 23 elections, every one since its first. Its blue began in the villa suburbs: Bloemendaal from 1948, Rozendaal near Arnhem from 1959, Wassenaar from 1967 and Laren from 1972. Wassenaar and Laren were still VVD in 2025, while Bloemendaal, Rozendaal, Heemstede and Amstelveen switched to D66 that year.

Three Churches, One Green (1967–1998)

From the mid-1960s the pillars cracked. In 1967 two new parties won seven seats each: D66, which wanted to blow up the old party system, and the Boerenpartij, the farmers' protest party, which came first in one small municipality north of Amsterdam. Compulsory voting was abolished in 1970. The KVP lost voters at nearly every election, from 50 seats in 1963 to 27 in 1972, and its ochre withdrew from the cities and Holland towards the south. In 1977 the KVP, ARP and CHU ran on one list as the Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA), which became a single party in 1980; on the map, three colours turn into one sea green that covered 58% of the land.

That green hides a paradox. In 1977 the PvdA of Joop den Uyl won 53 seats, its best result ever, against the CDA's 49, yet the CDA came first in 527 of the 842 municipalities. The same happened in 1982, when the PvdA won 47 seats and the CDA 45 but the CDA came first in 439 of 774 municipalities, and in 1994, when the CDA fell from 54 to 34 seats and still came first in 327 of 636 while the PvdA, with 37 seats, was the largest party. The PvdA had the most seats in 1956, 1971, 1972, 1977, 1982 and 1994, and each time it came first in fewer municipalities than its Catholic or Christian-democratic rival. Only in 1998, with 45 seats, did it lead on the map too, in 244 of 548 municipalities. Christian democrats won the villages and social democrats the towns, and there were far more villages.

The Floating Voter (2002–2025)

Then the map started to swing. Nine days before the election of May 2002, Pim Fortuyn was shot dead in Hilversum. His list won 26 seats from nothing and came first in Rotterdam, The Hague, Zaanstad, Dordrecht, Schiedam, Vlaardingen, Spijkenisse, Purmerend, Almere and Lelystad. Nearly everywhere else the CDA of Jan Peter Balkenende came first (it won 43 seats), and with the PvdA halved from 45 seats to 23, the map of 2002 is 86% CDA green, its high-water mark. In 2006 the Socialist Party won 25 seats and came first in a handful of places, among them Nijmegen, Heerlen and Oss, the home town of its leader Jan Marijnissen.

In 2010 the VVD became the largest party for the first time, with 31 seats, and came first in 198 of 430 municipalities, while the PVV of Geert Wilders, with 24 seats, took much of Limburg at once: Maastricht, Heerlen, Kerkrade, Sittard, Roermond, Venlo and Weert, and across the border in Brabant, Rucphen, which has voted PVV at every election since. The two-horse race of 2012 between the VVD (41 seats) and the PvdA (38) was the PvdA's last stand on the map. In 2017 it fell to 9 seats and, after twenty elections and 66 years, came first nowhere. Amsterdam and Nijmegen went to GroenLinks, the university towns of Groningen, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft and Wageningen to D66, and nearly 70% of the land to the VVD.

In 2021 the VVD of Mark Rutte came first in 301 of 352 municipalities, 82% of the land, and two years later the PVV did almost the same: it won 37 seats in 2023 and came first in 257 of 342 municipalities. What was left over is a map of its own: GroenLinks-PvdA in the big cities and university towns, the VVD in Wassenaar, Laren and the villa suburbs, the SGP in the Bible Belt, and Nieuw Sociaal Contract, the new party of Pieter Omtzigt, an MP from Enschede, in Twente. In 2025 the pattern broke up again. The PVV kept 158 municipalities and about 47% of the land, from Limburg and Zeeland to Groningen. D66 took most of the large and mid-sized cities, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Groningen, Eindhoven, Tilburg, Breda and 's-Hertogenbosch among them. GroenLinks-PvdA held Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Leeuwarden and Wageningen, NSC vanished from parliament, and the CDA, up from 5 seats to 18, came first again in much of Friesland, Twente and the Veluwe.

How to Read the Map

Each colour is a party, and a patch is every municipality where that party got the most votes. Parties keep their own colour where they have one; when two parties' colours were close, the older party keeps it and the newer one gets a shade of it. So the SDAP keeps red, and the CPN, PvdA, SP and GroenLinks-PvdA get dark red, light red, raspberry and rose; the CHU keeps dark blue, so the PVV is a darker navy and NSC a steel blue. Parties without an established colour get one nobody else uses, such as purple for the RKSP and ochre for the KVP.

Remember that the map measures land, not people. In 1956 the KVP came first in 452 municipalities and the PvdA in fewer, yet the PvdA's red covered 46% of the land and the KVP's ochre 37%, because the PvdA won the large, thinly populated municipalities of the north and the new polders. Zoom in on the Randstad or on a province to see the small municipalities. The map has no data for the elections of 1918 to 1933 and of 1989, for which no complete results per municipality were available, so it jumps from 1986 to 1994. The Noordoostpolder is blank in 1946 and 1948, and the Zuidelijke IJsselmeerpolders from 1967 to 1971, because they had no separate result.

How the Map Was Made

The results from 1937 to 1986 come from the Historische Database Nederlandse Gemeenten (HDNG) of the IISG and NLGIS, those from 1994 to 2017 from the Kiesraad's verkiezingsuitslagen.nl, and those of 2021, 2023 and 2025 from the Kiesraad's official result files. The municipal borders up to 1994 are O.W.A. Boonstra's NLGis shapefiles, and from 1998 on those of CBS and PDOK, simplified to about 100 to 350 metres for a view of the whole country. Each election is drawn on the borders of its own year, so the mergers between two elections show up as patches that grow and fuse.

Exact ties, about twenty in ninety years and mostly in tiny municipalities such as Katwoude and Muiden, go to the party that was larger nationally. Five municipalities are missing from the source data of 1946 and 1952 and are left blank. Several municipalities in 2025 were decided by a handful of votes (in Albrandswaard the PVV and VVD were level in the preliminary count), and the map follows the Kiesraad's final count.

Chronological Timeline

• 26 May 1937 — Last pre-war election; RKSP 31 seats, first in 499 of 1,056 municipalities
• 1937 — The CPN comes first in Finsterwolde, as it will until 1982
• 1946 — First election of the KVP and the new PvdA; the CPN wins 10 seats
• 1948 — First election of the VVD, which takes Bloemendaal
• 1952 — The SGP takes Staphorst
• 1956 — The house grows to 150 seats; PvdA 50, KVP 49
• 1963 — KVP and PvdA each cover 39.9% of the land
• 1967 — D66 and the Boerenpartij win 7 seats each
• 1970 — Compulsory voting abolished
• 1977 — First CDA list; PvdA 53 seats, but CDA first in 527 of 842 municipalities
• 1982 — Last election at which the CPN comes first anywhere
• 1994 — CDA falls from 54 to 34 seats and still leads the map
• 1998 — PvdA leads the map for the only time, in 244 of 548 municipalities
• 2002 — Fortuyn murdered; LPF 26 seats; CDA green covers 86% of the land
• 2006 — SP 25 seats
• 2010 — VVD the largest party; PVV takes much of Limburg
• 2017 — PvdA falls to 9 seats and comes first nowhere
• 2021 — VVD first in 301 of 352 municipalities
• 2023 — PVV 37 seats, first in 257 of 342 municipalities
• 29 October 2025 — D66 and PVV 26 seats each; PVV first in 158 of 342