The Socialist party remains the biggest in the latest Maurice de Hond weekly poll but is down one seat on a week ago with 36. The right-wing VVD rose one seat to 32.

The shift follows comments in a newspaper by SP leader Emile Roemer, who said he would not pay an eventual fine if the Netherlands failed to meet Brussels’ financial targets.
Next in the De Hond poll is the anti-immigration PVV on 18, followed by Labour on 16, D66 on 15 and the Christian Democrats on 14, indicating again how tight the race is for third place.
But De Hond’s results are very different to those of the Ipsos Synovate pollsters, who say the VVD is on target to win 35 of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament while the SP is on 29.
All the polls have a margin of two seats either way.
Despite the SP’s leading position in the poll, VVD leader Mark Rutte is a more popular leader. Some 46% of the 4,000 people questioned by De Hond said they would prefer Rutte over SP leader Emile Roemer in a two way fight. !0% had no preference and the rest did not know.