Everywhere in the Netherlands, the newly elected members of the Provincial Council go to the polls. Today they elect the new Senate. The BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) will become the largest party in the new Senate, but it is not yet clear how big the victory will be.
According to the provisional prognosis, the BBB will enter the Senate with 17 people after Tuesday. GroenLinks and the PvdA, which are going to form one new group, are together virtually fifteen senators and the VVD would get ten seats. The Senate has 75 members.
Insecure
The fact that the result is not yet certain is because the people who are allowed to elect the Senate are not obliged to vote for their own party. They may also support another party. In this way, parties can help allies get an extra seat, without losing a seat themselves, in the hope that they will get something in return later.
Each vote starts at 3 p.m. A total of 616 people will be allowed to vote on Tuesday. This concerns the members of Parliament in the twelve provinces and the members of the electoral colleges in the ‘special municipalities’ Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. In addition, for the first time there is an electoral college that votes for Dutch nationals living abroad. Those members meet in the city hall of The Hague.
Each vote is worth a certain number of points, depending on the number of inhabitants. A vote in South Holland yields 692 points, while a vote for Saba is good for four points. In total there are 178,970 points to be distributed. 2386.27 points are needed for a seat in the Senate.
BBB
In the provincial elections on March 15, more than two months ago, the BBB received the most votes in every province. That has never happened before. In Drenthe, the party received almost a third of all votes. In total, the party ended with 138 people in the States, more than the numbers two (VVD, 63) and three (GroenLinks, 51) combined.
The Senate must review bills passed by the House of Representatives. If the Senate has also agreed, a law will come into effect.
