page_title: Labour Party (Netherlands)
section_title: 2010–present
hierarchical_section_title: Labour Party (Netherlands) / History / 2010–present
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Viceminister-president en Minister van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid Lodewijk Asscher
context_page_description: The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in the Netherlands.
  The party was founded in 1946 as a merger of the Social Democratic Workers' Party, the Free-thinking Democratic League, and the Christian Democratic Union. Prime Ministers from the Labour Party have been Willem Drees, Joop den Uyl, and Wim Kok.
  From 2012 to 2017, the PvdA formed the second largest parliamental faction and was the junior partner in the Second Rutte cabinet with the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. Since 2016, Lodewijk Asscher has been Leader of the Labour Party. The party fell to only nine seats in the House of Representatives at the 2017 general election, making it only the seventh-largest faction in the chamber–its worst showing ever. However, the PvdA rebounded with a first-place finish in the 2019 European Parliament election in the Netherlands, winning 6 of 26 seats with 19% of the vote.
  The Labour Party is a member of the European Party of European Socialists and the global Progressive Alliance. In the European Parliament, where the Labour Party has 6 seats, it is part of the parliamentary group Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
context_section_description: After withdrawing from the government, Wouter Bos announced he would leave politics to spend more time with his wife and two daughters. Then mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, took his place as leader of the PvdA. In the 2010 election, the PvdA won 30 seats, a loss of three, and were narrowly overtaken by the VVD. After the election, a "Purple Coalition" was considered – it would have required a fourth party in addition to the VVD, PvdA and D66 – but talks broke down and the PvdA entered opposition.
  Cohen resigned as leader in February 2012. Diederik Samsom was subsequently elected the party leader. In the 2012 general election, the Labour Party won 38 seats, a gain of 8, defying initial predictions that the Socialist Party would overtake them. Following the election the party entered a governing coalition with the VVD under Mark Rutte, with Labour's Lodewijk Asscher becoming Deputy Prime Minister.
  Opinion polls suggested that popular support for the PvdA fell into a gradual decline in the years after the 2012 election. The party was polled as low as 5% by Peil on 8 May 2016. In December 2016 Samson was defeated by Lodewijk Asscher in a party leadership election.
  In the Dutch general election of 2017, the PvdA suffered the biggest defeat in Dutch electoral history, receiving only 5.7% of the votes and losing 29 of its 38 seats. Asscher did not resign from his post, claiming the defeat was his predecessor's responsibility. The party experienced a degree of revival in 2019, obtaining the most votes in that year's European Parliament election. This marked the first time the PvdA has finished on top in a national election since 1998.
caption: Lodewijk Asscher, party leader since 2016
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2015:09:15 12:36:12", "Image ExifOffset": "172", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "310", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4650", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3720", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3811"}