The VVD won the 2012 election, but lost most members

The right-wing Liberal VVD may have emerged as the biggest party after the 2012 general election, but they also lost most members, the Volkskrant reports on Friday.

The VVD lost 7.5% of its membership base last year, largely due to the unease created by plans to make health insurance income-dependent, which have since been dropped. The party now has 35,362 members, making it the fourth biggest in terms of membership.

The left-wing greens GroenLinks, the Christian Democrats (CDA) and ChristenUnie all lost members, but the CDA still has the biggest membership, at over 59,000, the Volkskrant research showed.

Wins

The Liberal democratic party D66 was the biggest net gainer, with an increase in members of 9.5%. It now has over 23,000 members. The fundamentalist Christian SGP boosted its membership by 6.1% to 29,648.

Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV does not feature in the statistics because he is the only member.

In total, over 315,000 people are members of a political party, an increase of 1.2% over the year before.

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