Dutch General Election, 2006 - Opinion Polls

Opinion Polls

In the Netherlands there are three agencies that conduct frequent polls throughout the year (usually weekly). There is usually a small difference which may be due to different sampling and surveying methods applied. From 1 November the 'Politieke Barometer' started with two polls each week, and from 13 November they increased the frequency to daily polls.

The last polls prior to the election of the Politieke Barometer, the poll by NOVA and Interview-NSS, the TNS-NIPO polls by RTL4, and the poll by Maurice de Honds' peil.nl yield the following results:

The day before the elections, about one third of the electorate had not yet made up their minds, resulting in polls giving strongly varying results. For this reason campaigning continued on election day itself. An aspect of this was tactical voting, with SP telling PvdA voters that a strong SP would force PvdA to form a left-wing coalition, VVD saying something similar to CDA voters concerning a right-wing coalition, PvdA and CDA saying they need to be strong to prevent the other party from forming or dominating a coalition and ChristenUnie saying it has the best cards to participate in any coalition. Shortly before the elections, PvdA leader Bos showed himself more interested in the much talked about left-wing coalition of PvdA, SP and GroenLinks (possibly with ChristenUnie), which he had refused to talk about for months. Many suspected he changed his mind to stop the exodus of PvdA voters to SP. During the municipal elections earlier that year PvdA grew strong and after that they even grew to 60 seats in the polls, but after March a gradual decline had set in, almost halving the size of PvdA in the polls.

Party 2003 Politieke Barometer Peil.nl TNS-NIPO Election results
(%) (seats) 21 Nov 2006
(seats)		 21 Nov 2006
(seats)		 Exit polls
(seats)		 20 Nov 2006
(seats)		 Exit polls
(seats)		 (%) (seats) change 2003
(seats)
Christian Democratic Appeal
28.6
44
41
42
43
41
38
26.54
41
-3
Labour Party
27.3
42
37
38
35
31
34
21.18
33
-9
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy
17.9
28
23
22
21
22
20
14.67
22
-6
Socialist Party
6.3
9
23
23
24
32
30
16.57
25
+16
Fortuyna
5.7
8
1
0
0
0
0
0.21
0
-8
GreenLeft
5.1
8
7
8
8
6
6
4.59
7
-1
Democrats 66
4.1
6
3
2
2
1
2
1.96
3
-3
ChristianUnion
2.1
3
6
6
5
8
7
3.98
6
+3
Reformed Political Party
1.6
2
2
2
2
2
2
1.56
2
0
Party for Freedomb
DNR
—
4
5
6
6
8
5.89
9
+9
Party for the Animals
0.5
0
2
1
3
2
2
1.82
2
+2
One NL
DNR
—
1
1
1
0
1
0.64
0
0
Others
0.8
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.36
0
0

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