Some of the voters have completely dropped out, according to survey after survey after survey. They no longer have faith in politics and it is difficult to persuade them to come to the polls. The fact that only half of those entitled to vote showed up for the municipal elections this week has set off alarm bells for many administrators and politicians.
But let’s not pretend it’s a new phenomenon, says social geographer Josse de Voogd. The trend has been around for years. Together with his colleague René Cuperus, De Voogd made the Atlas of the Netherlands Dropped Out, in which he mapped out which groups have little faith in politics and where they live. “If you look at the map with turnout figures, you see a lot of similarities with the places where people live who have lost faith in politics,” he says.
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