Big fall in political party membership

Membership of a political party fell in 2013 with the coalition parties particularly badly hit, the political documentation centre at Groningen university reports.

The biggest loser was the green party GroenLinks where membership fell 6.3% to 22,435 members.

Of the two coalition parties, Labour saw its membership numbers fall by 5.8% and the right-wing VVD by 5.3%.

The Christian Democrats remain the biggest party with 56,310 members but this is down 4.8% with a loss of 2,800 members.

The only parties to gain members were the left-wing liberals D66 with a record 23,767 members, the fundamental Christian SGP with an increase of 1,378 and the seniors party 50Plus which nearly doubled its membership. Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV does not feature in the list because it does not have a membership system.

At the beginning of this year, 308,846 people were members of a political party, a decrease of 6,094 compared with a year earlier, the organisation says.

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