By Axel Benaben, Leonie Kupferschmidt and Annelotte Fagel.
On this 15th of March, the Dutch people and other residents of the Netherlands will be able to vote for the next provincial councils and water authorities. Last time those elections were held, the abstention rate was 53% in Amsterdam, and 56% in all the Netherlands.
Today, everyone able to vote will help determine who gets to decide provincial and water plans over the next four years. But how high of a voting participation can we expect? As it becomes clear that the Dutch voters are highly reluctant toward those elections, we went to them to see how they feel about the political scene, and how trust-worthy it can be.
According to KiesKompas, 30% of the people of Noord-Holland feel like distrust is the perfect word to describe their relationship with the politics. Let’s see other numbers that will tell us how do Noord-Hollander feel about those elections.
Once we’ve read the data, it was time to hear what the Amsterdam voters really had to say. We ventured in two polling stations: Oosterparkkerk and Wibautstraat.
As those photos were being taken, we asked a few people what they thought about these elections, and if they think that everyone is being represented. Here are the most compelling answers:
“As I study urban planning I feel like these are my favorite elections. But I think that the representation during these elections is not the best as you can’t really vote for someone that is your age or that has the same social background as you have.”
“I’m gonna be honest I didn’t really look that good into it. Like I used to do a lot of research before voting but this time I just went on Stemwigzer and went for it. I don’t care about the people just the parties.”
“I think that it is a very important election for climate and the future of our generation. It’s important to vote for someone that you feel like is gonna do some things. I’ll vote for someone that I think knows how to plan a city and make it livable, but I don’t really hope for anything to change in the next few years though.”
It has also been reported that there is a big distrust toward the politics. Let’s talk about that for a bit with voters.
It remains to be seen whether people trust politics and whether more people will vote then in previous provincial elections.