On the 6th of April, a Dutch referendum will be held on an EU agreement for closer relations with Ukraine, after 427,000 people backed a citizens’ petition of ‘GeenPeil’.
On behalf of the ‘NOS’, a national news broadcasting agency, Ipsos in the Netherlands will conduct an exit poll on referendum day. The results will be broadcast in prime time to a substantial audience of Dutch viewers. We were able to win this work because of our long lasting partnership with NOS and our reputation for conducting accurate exit polls and election studies in general.
‘GeenPeil’ is an initiative of ‘GeenStijl’, an influential protest blog in the Netherlands, which advocates for more democratic deficit in the European Union. With the petition, ‘GeenPeil’ takes advantage of a recently implemented law mandating advisory referendums.
The Dutch parliament had already backed the EU deal, which removes trade barriers between the EU and the Ukraine. But ‘no’ campaigners fear that it could be a step towards EU membership and would cost Dutch taxpayers billions of euros. On the other side, ‘yes’ campaigners make voters aware of the risk that Ukraine will be more likely to fall under Russia’s hemisphere if the outcome of the referendum is negative. However the ‘yes’-campaign is struggling to motivate voters to show up at the ballot box, while the ‘no’-campaign seems to be succeeding in rallying the public by framing the agreement into an anti-EU sentiment, which resonates widely among Dutch voters. Although recent polls show the ‘yes’-campaign is gaining ground, voters who support the agreement are inclined not to vote as a protest on the rather costly and superfluous referendum.
In theory, the agreement should have gone into provisional effect on 1 January this year. However, if the Dutch public votes ‘no’ on the agreement and the Dutch government succumbs, the referendum could seriously obstruct EU-Ukraine relations.
There are, some reasons to believe the Netherlands will not be an obstructionist member state:
The Dutch referendum on the 6th of April is extraordinary in many ways, and will draw much national and international attention for our Exit Poll and the Ipsos brand.
