THE HAGUE, 05/03/10 - Immigrant voters have again provided important support for Labour (PvdA) in the local elections. Moroccans in particular voted for the party en masse, according to research by Amsterdam city council and the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam.

The PvdA remained the biggest party in Amsterdam by some way, partly due to 74 percent of Moroccans voting for the social democrats. Among Ghanaians, a big group in the Zuidoost district, the figure was even 88 percent. Among Surinamese and Antilleans, the PvdA 'only' won 53 percent, De Volkskrant reported yesterday. It gave no figures for Turks.

The PvdA was as always the biggest party in Amsterdam by a long way. But it did drop to 28.9 percent from 39.4 percent. The conservatives (VVD) won some ground (17.1 percent), as did the leftwing Greens (GroenLinks), to 15.2 percent, while the Socialist Party (SP) vote was halved to 7.4 percent. Centre-left D66 climbed to 14.8 percent from 4.1 percent in Amsterdam.

In 2006, the immigrant vote for PvdA was even higher at 80 percent, with only GroenLinks and SP picking up a few crumbs. This time around, D66 was also a competitor. The turnout in Amsterdam among immigrants was similar to four years earlier, ranging from 46 percent among Turks to 26 percent among Surinamese and Antilleans.