When people are asked about the largest party in the Provincial Council in their own province, the vast majority think it is the VVD. But this is only the case in half of the provinces. In Friesland, Overijssel, Zeeland and Limburg, for example, the CDA is the largest, but only one in five inhabitants knows about it. The situation is even worse with Groningen and North Holland: GroenLinks is the largest group there, but it is known at 1% and 5% respectively.
Commissioner totally unknown
It is also a dramatic situation with regard to the knowledge of the King’s Commissioner. Only 6% of participants remember their name. Only in Limburg (Emile Roemer) and Drenthe (Jetta Klijnsma) one in five.
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super proud
Knowledge may be quite poor everywhere, but when it comes to pride and involvement, people in the outlying provinces score much higher than those in the Randstad. The people of Zeeland (90%), Drent (86%) and Frisians (80%) are the most proud of their own province, followed by people from Limburg (73%) and Brabant (71%). The Zeelanders praise their beaches and their poise, the Frisians their “individuality” and the Brabants are known to be mood makers, but they also think so: “cosiness” and “friendliness” are what they are most proud.
South Holland dangles at the very bottom of the list. Residents of this province are the least proud, but this is still only a majority: 53%. The South Dutch are proud of their ‘diversity’, cities with ‘cultural offer’ and ‘energetic mentality’ of its citizens.
Provincial flags
In addition, when it comes to knowledge of provincial flags, the northern and southern provinces again score much better than those in the middle of the Netherlands. In Groningen, Friesland, Zeeland and Limburg this figure is over 90%, but in the Central and Randstad provinces it is less than half.
The survey was conducted from February 7 to 9 by DVJ Insights on behalf of RTL News and surveyed a representative sample of 2,780 respondents. At least 150 inhabitants of each province are included in the study.