Sarah celebrated an election victory in style: ‘My goal was to get Volt in the Parliament, and we did it.’

Thursday morning at 1:30 am, Sarah de Koff texts me that she’ll be putting her phone on airplane mode. It has been a long day, and she’ll probably be sleeping in quite late. If I can’t reach her in the morning, she promises to call me back as soon as possible. But ultimately Sarah didn’t stay in bed, getting up at around 8 again. “I’ll catch some extra sleep later,” she says with a laugh.

Econometrics student and Volt candidate Sarah de Koff spent most of her post-election evening in front of the tube. With a beer in one hand, she and her housemates watched the NOS’s coverage of the election results. She also had a video conference with two fellow candidates, commenting on the exit polls as they came in. “We had a fun time together. We’ve never met in person, but we’re super-proud of each other.”

When she woke up this morning, the very first thing she did was check the election results. “Volt still had the same number of seats, but this morning was when the results for Utrecht and Amsterdam came in. It was really cool to see that we had received around 6 per cent of the votes there.”

Quiet day

The ‘hectic period’ of recent weeks has finally come to an end. On Thursday, she has decided to ‘take a day off’ from her thesis so she could ‘relax and recharge a bit’. “I’m going to try and do normal stuff today, like getting groceries and doing the laundry. I don’t want to be glued to my screen all day following every result that comes in – although I’ve noticed it’s hard to let go,” she says with a smile.

Sarah was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who voted for Volt. “Personally, I thought we’d end up winning two seats – which I would have already been very happy with. Yesterday, I could sense over the course of the day that something bigger was in the works. I got a lot of messages from people whom I don’t know personally telling me they had voted Volt. And then you turn on the telly in the evening, and they say you might even get four seats. That’s fantastic!”

Online get-together

As no. 16 on Volt’s list of candidates, Sarah won’t be entering Parliament herself. But that can’t spoil the fun. “My primary goal was to get Volt in the House of Representatives, and we did it. I’m super-proud of this outcome,” says the Econometrics student.

She’ll be celebrating in style on Thursday evening, says Sarah: “That’s when we’ll be having an online get-together with the Rotterdam members and all the candidates. Whether we end up with three seats or four – or perhaps only two in the end – we’ll definitely be celebrating this win. Whatever way you see it, it’s a huge achievement: two months ago, we weren’t even a contender in the polls, and now we’re in Parliament.”