Netherlands 1986 general election

Final results from ParlGov, read 5 October 2026: Christian Democratic Appeal won 54 of 150 seats with 34.6% of the vote; 85.8% of registered voters cast a ballot, up 4.8 points on 1982.

Netherlands
Held Wednesday 21 May 1986

Result

76 for a majority

Seats and votes by party

Party	Seats	± seats	%	± points	Votes
Christian Democratic Appeal	54	+9	34.6	+5.2	3,172,918
Labour Party	52	+5	33.3	+2.9	3,051,678
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy	27	−9	17.4	−5.7	1,596,991
Democrats 66	9	+3	6.1	+1.9	562,466
Reformed Political Party	3	0	1.7	−0.2	159,740
Political Party of Radicals	2	0	1.3	−0.4	115,203
Pacifist Socialist Party	1	−2	1.2	−1.1	110,182
Reformed Political League	1	0	1.0	+0.1	88,381
Reformatory Political Federation	1	−1	0.9	−0.6	83,582
Communist Party of the Netherlands	0	−3	0.6	−1.2	57,847

± is the change against the Netherlands 1982 general election, party by party.

Votes by party

Christian Democratic Appeal 3,172,918
Labour Party 3,051,678
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy 1,596,991
Democrats 66 562,466
Reformed Political Party 159,740
Political Party of Radicals 115,203
Pacifist Socialist Party 110,182
Reformed Political League 88,381
Reformatory Political Federation 83,582
Communist Party of the Netherlands 57,847

ParlGov lists parties with at least 1 percent of the vote or 2 seats, so the rows do not add up to the valid votes. How we read it.

Share of the vote

Christian Democratic Appeal34.6%
Labour Party33.3%
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy17.4%
Democrats 666.1%
Reformed Political Party1.7%
Political Party of Radicals1.3%
Pacifist Socialist Party1.2%
Reformed Political League1.0%

Turnout

85.8% of the 10,727,701 registered voters cast a ballot (9,199,621 ballots), up 4.8 points on 1982. 9,172,159 of them were valid votes. How turnout is counted.

Votes and seats

Christian Democratic Appeal34.6% of votes36.0% of seats
Labour Party33.3% of votes34.7% of seats
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy17.4% of votes18.0% of seats
Democrats 666.1% of votes6.0% of seats
Reformed Political Party1.7% of votes2.0% of seats
Political Party of Radicals1.3% of votes1.3% of seats
Pacifist Socialist Party1.2% of votes0.7% of seats
Reformed Political League1.0% of votes0.7% of seats
Reformatory Political Federation0.9% of votes0.7% of seats

Each party's share of the vote (outlined) and of the seats (filled)

The Gallagher index of disproportionality is 1.6 (0 when seats follow votes exactly); the effective number of parties is 3.8 by votes and 3.5 by seats; Christian Democratic Appeal led Labour Party by 1.3 points of the vote. How these are computed.

Sources and licence

ParlGov 2024 Release (Döring and Manow), Harvard Dataverse (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal
Wikidata, party colours (P465) (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal

Our text and compilation: CC BY 4.0. How to reuse and cite this page.