Some 28% of the Dutch electorate is aged 65 or over, new data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), published ahead of the parliamentary elections on 29 October, has found.
According to the data, some 13.4 million people are eligible to vote in the elections, representing almost 91% of the adult population. This is lower than the 2017 election, when 94% of the population were eligible to vote.
An estimated 360,000 young people are able to cast their vote for the first time, having recently turned 18, the legal voting age in the Netherlands.
Older voters
The share of older voters (65 and over) has increased significantly over the past couple of decades, from 18% in 1995 to 28% today.
The average age of the eligible voter has also increased steadily, from 45.3 years in 1995 to 49.5 years in 2015, and 51.1 years in 2025.
At the same time, the proportion of voters under the age of 35 – around a quarter – has remained relatively stable since 2010, although this cohort represented one-third of the electorate thirty years ago.
In addition, the cohort aged 35 to 49 has fallen from 29.4% to 21.2% over the same period. The cohort aged 50 to 64 has increased from 19.6% to 25.8%, while voters aged 65 to 80 rose from 13.4% to 20.8%. The proportion of voters aged over 80 has nearly doubled, from 4.1% in 1995 to 7% in 2025.
Regional voters
On a regional basis, the Dutch electorate is oldest in Bergen, where 41.9% of voters are 65 or older, followed by Laren (41.6%) in Noord-Holland, and in Vaals (41.1%) in Limburg.
‘Other municipalities in Limburg also have a relatively high number of people aged over 65 who are eligible to vote, as do municipalities in the north and east of the Netherlands and in Zeeland,’ Statistics Netherlands noted. ‘In the older age groups, more women than men are eligible to vote, because women live longer than men, on average.’
Conversely, university towns such as Groningen (39.9%) and Utrecht (39.6%) have the highest share of eligible voters aged between 18 and 34, followed by Leiden, Nijmegen, Wageningen and Delft.
Finally, of the 2.8 million adult residents of the Netherlands that were born outside the country, just over half are Dutch citizens and are therefore entitled to vote. Read more here.
