SP International :: Representatives

1998 General Elections in the Netherlands

On May 6th, 1998, 73.4 percent of the Dutch electorate went to the ballot to elect 150 new members of the ‘Second Chamber’. This is 5 percent less than in 1994. The downfall in the number of voters was substantially bigger in the poorer neighbourhoods.
The governing parties PvdA and VVD both won: eight and seven seats. The third governing party, D66 lost ten seats. Oppositional CDA lost five.
Leftist opposition parties GreenLeft (GL) and the Socialist Party (SP) won convincingly: six and three seats.
The two one-issue 'elderly citizens' parties that entered Parliament in 1994 (with seven seats in total) did not return. Nor did the extreme right Centre Democrats (CD). They lost the three seats they held since 1994.

After the elections PvdA, VVD and D66 continued their governing Purple Coalition despite of the fact that half of the Second Chamber’s seats are now occupied by parties that call themselves progressive.

The SP tripled its vote to 303,703, from 1.3 percent in 1994 to 3.5 percent in 1998. GL now has 7.3 percent (in 1994: 3.5 percent). SP now is the 6th party in the Dutch Parliament, occupying 5 seats.
The party performed best in the southern provinces of Brabant and Limburg, and the highest SP score was in stronghold Oss (20.8 percent; in 1994: 12.9 percent).

These are the results in cities with party branches:

Exit polls show that SP voters are predominantly low-paid and low-educated, much like the voters of the PvdA and in remarkable contrast to the voters of GreenLeft.

The SP group in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament is formed by Jan Marijnissen, Remi Poppe, Jan de Wit, Agnes Kant, and Harry van Bommel.

Bob Ruers, former SP group leader in the city council of Utrecht, replaced Jan de Wit in the Dutch Senate.