2012 Belgian local elections

National political parties are mostly separated by language community. A lot of municipalities have local parties as well as a presence of national parties. Here are the most important national parties:

• Dutch-speaking, generally contending in Flanders and Brussels: N-VA (nationalist), CD&V (Christian-democrats), sp.a (socialists), Open VLD (liberals), Groen (ecologists), Vlaams Belang (far-right), PvdA (Marxist)
• French-speaking, generally contending in Wallonia and Brussels: PS (socialists), MR (liberals), FDF (liberals), CdH (Christian-democrats), Ecolo (ecologists), FN (far-right), PTB (Marxist)
• German-speaking, generally contending in several German-speaking municipalities in Wallonia

For the third time, non-Belgian EU residents may vote and be candidate for the municipal elections under the same conditions as Belgian residents, and for the second time non-Belgian non-EU residents may vote, but not be candidate, after 5 years residency. As voting is compulsory and Belgium may not impose voting on foreign residents, would-be voters from both categories have to fill a document and go to their municipal administration before August 1, 2012 to be included on the list of electors. Non-EU residents have to sign a document accepting to conform to Belgian laws and Constitution.[2] The percentage of foreign residents who are enlisted as electors has severely declined from 2006 to 2012: from 20.9% to 14.85% for EU residents, from 15.7% to 6.30% for non-EU residents (still including Bulgarians and Rumanians in 2006).[3]

Results are available via http://bruxelleselections2012.irisnet.be/

The nationalist party N-VA became the largest party in the 2010 federal election. It was expected that the party would now achieve a number of seats in many Flemish municipalities, which was indeed the case. Local lists include cartels between two parties and independents, varying from one municipality to another, e.g. SP.A and CD&V in the city of Antwerp, but SP.A and Groen! in the districts of Antwerp and in Ghent, Open VLD and Groen! (and a splinter group from the CD&V) in Mechelen.

Parties on the right, CD&V, Open VLD and Vlaams Belang, generally lose votes in previous elections whereas N-VA has grown a lot.

The socialist party SP.A is especially successful in large cities, but has slightly been losing votes in previous elections too.

The green party Groen remains stable with a relatively low percentage of votes.

Results are available via http://vlaanderenkiest.be/verkiezingen2012/

Voting being mandatory but unenforced, turnout was lowest in Antwerp city (85.56%), specifically the city centre district (82.98%), as well as Oostende (85.98%), followed mostly by the linguistically sensitive municipalities in the Brussels Periphery.

The provincial councils of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, East Flanders, West Flanders and Limburg were elected. The number of councillors has been reduced.

In East Flanders, Flemish Brabant and especially Antwerp, N-VA became the largest party in the province, followed by CD&V. In Limburg and West Flanders, CD&V remained the biggest party followed by N-VA.

Province	Total seats	CD&V	Vlaams Belang	Groen	N-VA	Open VLD	PVDA+	SP.A	UF
Antwerp	72 ( 12)	16.8 (13)	10.8 (7)	9.3 (6)	35.9 (27)	10.1 (7)	3.4 (2)	12.8 (10)	—
East Flanders	72 ( 12)	19.8 (15)	9.3 (6)	9 (6)	26.1 (21)	19.3 (15)	1.7 (0)	12.7 (9)	—
Flemish Brabant	72 ( 12)	19.5 (15)	6.7 (5)	9.6 (7)	25.8 (19)	16.8 (13)	1.2 (0)	12.1 (8)	7.1 (5)
Limburg	63 ( 12)	27.5 (18)	9.1 (6)	†	26.1 (17)	14.1 (9)	2.2 (0)	20.1 (13)†	—
West Flanders	72 ( 12)	27.6 (21)	7.7 (5)	7.5 (4)	25.3 (20)	13.4 (10)	1.3 (0)	15.8 (12)	—
Total	351 ( 60)

Party		Votes	%	+/– (2006)	Seats	+/– (2006)
	New Flemish Alliance (N-VA)	1,165,938	28.5	*	104	*
	Christian Democratic and Flemish (CD&V)	877,019	21.5	*	82	*
	Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats (Open VLD)	595,932	14.6	4.4	54
	Socialist Party–Different (SP.A)	580,078	11.5	7.7	51†
	Flemish Interest (VB)	365,439	8.9	12.6	29
	Green	314,538	7.7	0.1	24†
	Union des Francophones (UF)	48,920	1.2		5	1
	Workers' Party of Belgium (PVDA+)	84,037	2.1	2.1	2	2
	Other parties	55,284	1.4		—
Valid votes		4,087,185
Invalid votes
Blanco votes
Total					351

† In Limburg: coalition SP.A - Groen. Only one of the 13 elected candidates (Hassan Amaghlaou) is a member of Groen.

Below are the results for the municipal council elections of the eight most populous cities, which include the five provincial capitals.

After the election, Christoph D'Haese became mayor of Aalst (in East Flanders), succeeding Ilse Uyttersprot.

A lot of attention goes to the city of Antwerp, where Bart De Wever, the president of N-VA, wants to become mayor and put an end to decades of socialist mayors, the current one being Patrick Janssens (sp.a). Christian-democrat CD&V and socialist sp.a will form one list. Also Wouter Van Besien (president of Groen) is contending for the position of mayor, and Filip Dewinter of extreme-right Vlaams Belang is campaigning in Antwerp. According to a poll, N-VA would get 42,9% of the votes, giving 26 out of 55 seats in the municipal party, and 46,5% would like to see De Wever become the new mayor.[6]

In Bruges (capital of West Flanders), the incumbent mayor Patrick Moenaert (CD&V), who led a coalition of CD&V/N-VA, SP.A and VLD (which were all represented parties except Groen and VB), quit so all possibilities remained open. Polls gave CD&V, SP.A and N-VA as major parties.[7]

In Ghent (capital of East Flanders), the incumbent mayor Daniël Termont is very popular. SP.A, his party, now formed a cartel with Groen. Polls predict the cartel will get about 43% of the votes. The parties Open VLD of Mathias De Clercq and N-VA of Siegfried Bracke follow after a gap.[8]

Vincent Van Quickenborne became mayor of Kortrijk (in West Flanders), with a coalition of Open Vld, N-VA and sp.a, defeating incumbent mayor Stefaan De Clerck and his CD&V, thereby ending a 150-year period of Catholic and Christian democratic mayors in the city.

In Leuven (capital of Flemish Brabant), polls indicated that SP.A, the party of incumbent mayor Louis Tobback, would still be the largest. N-VA, CD&V and Groen follow after a gap.[9]

Bart Somers (Open Vld), mayor since 2001, continued after the elections with his "vld-Groen-m+ city list", but with N-VA and CD&V as coalition partners instead of sp.a. Sp.a became opposition, along with a significantly reduced Vlaams Belang.

The provincial councils of Namur, Walloon Brabant, Liège, Hainaut and Luxembourg were elected. The number of councillors has been reduced.

Province	Total seats	CDH		CSP		Ecolo		FDF		MR		PFF-MR		PS		PTB+		SP
Hainaut	56 ( 28)	14.39%	6 ( 9)	—		10.88%	4 ( 1)	2.3%	0	23.17%	16 ( 7)	—		39.68%	30 ( 8)	2.5%	0	—
Liège	56 ( 28)	13.76%	7 ( 6)	1.72%	1 ( 1)	14.76%	8 ( 3)	1.7%	0	25.16%	16 ( 6)	1.74%	1 ( 1)	32.22%	20 ( 12)	4.71%	2 ( 2)	0.72%	1 ( 1)
Luxembourg	37 ( 10)	34.95%	14 ( 8)	—		11.58%	2 ( 1)	1.8%	0	26.06	11 ( 6)	—		23.03%	10 ( 4)	0.6%	0	—
Namur	37 ( 19)	19.87%	8 ( 6)	—		13.97%	4 ( 3)	2.4%	0	29.79%	13 ( 4)	—		27.82%	12 ( 6)	2.1%	0	—
Walloon Brabant	37 ( 19)	12.26%	5 ( 4)	—		16.29	6 ( 3)	4.78%	2 ( 2)	42.44%	17 ( 7)	—		17.33%	7 ( 5)	0.8%	0	—
Total	223 ( 104)	16,96%*	40		1	13,17%	24	2,41%	2	27,71%*	73		1	31,99%*	79	2,77%	2		1

• * includes the votes of the German-speaking sister party of Liegé province[10]