At least 504 women who were in an un-electable position on their party’s candidate list in the recent local elections have won a seat after all, the Stem op een Vrouw campaign group said on Monday.
Stem op een Vrouw (vote for a woman) aims to boost the number of women in elected office through tactical voting. If enough people vote for a woman lower down the list of candidates, she can leapfrog up the list and into the council.
In total, 44.4% of the votes in the March 18 local elections went to a female candidate. Women went on to win 37% of the 8,554 council seats, but accounted for just 32.7% of the candidate councillors.
Some 440 men also won a seat based on preference votes.
The campaign group estimates that 43 of the 340 councils elected last month are now made up of at least 50% women.
Heemstede, near Haarlem, tops the list, with women winning 13 out of 21 council seats. In Montfoort in Utrecht province, the council is made up of just one woman and 14 men.
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