In the Flemish Brabant city of Leuven, incumbent Mayor Mohamed Ridouani’s socialists have scored a major victory in today’s municipal elections. With all the votes counted the socialists finished on 47.7%, 15.7 percentage points up on the previous municipal elections in 2018.
The socialist gain more than double the number of votes of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA that gained the support of 19.7% of voters in Leuven (- 2.4%). Mayor Ridouani also amassed around 13,000 preference votes.
The news was less good for one of the socialist partners in the current city coalition, the greens. The greens were down 8 percentage points on 11.7%. The other party in the coalition, the Christian democrats is down 1.6 percentage points on 14.5%.
The candidate with the second highest number of preference votes is the first candidate on the Flemish nationalists list Zeger Debyser with just over 4,000 preference votes.
With over 40% of the votes the socialists will need to find just 1 over partner to join them in the new city coalition.