The Netherlands was plunged into uncertainty on Wednesday night after a second exit poll showed Geert Wilders’s party neck and neck with the resurgent centrists in a snap general election.
Mr Wilders’ dream of becoming prime minister appeared to be in tatters on Wednesday after an initial projection showed Dutch voters had favoured the liberal D66 party.
The big winner on the night was Rob Jetten, the party’s leader.
Tacking the once pro-refugee D66 to the Right on migration, Mr Jetten led the party to an astonishing comeback. It is set to take 26 seats, according to the forecast, after winning just nine at the last election in 2023.
Mr Wilders’s hard-Right Party for Freedom (PVV) is also expected to win 26 seats, but the contest still leans slightly toward D66 with a difference of less than 2,300 votes.
Although more than 97 per cent of ballots had been counted by early Thursday morning, results from a number of large urban areas including parts of Amsterdam have still not been reported.
Despite the uncertainty, Mr Jetten celebrated his D66’s “best result ever” and was confident his party would prevail.
Mr Jetten, who recently became engaged to Nicolas Keenan, an Argentinian professional hockey player, would be the first openly gay man, and the first D66 leader, to become prime minister.
The 38-year-old cast himself as the “anti-Wilders candidate”, reclaimed the Dutch flag from the far-Right, and delivered strong performances in televised debates. As the leader of the largest party, he is now front-runner to lead his country after campaigning on the slogan “It is possible”.
Before the new projections came out, Mr Wilders had conceded defeat.
Mr Wilders said: “The voters have spoken. We had hoped for a different outcome, but we kept our backs straight. We are more determined to fight than ever.”
“We prefer to govern, but being in opposition is also a lot of fun, and we do it very well,” he added later.
At the D66 election party in Leiden, Dutch flags were piled up to be handed to expectant supporters, who erupted into cheers and screams of joy when the exit poll was announced.
There were also EU flags as the party got under way in a nightclub just a 30-minute train ride from The Hague, perhaps in a rebuke to the Eurosceptic Mr Wilders.
“We’ve just witnessed something truly extraordinary, and it’s going to be a very exciting time,” Mr Jetten declared from the stage before a video of a huge, fluttering Dutch tricolour and a sea of flags waved by his supporters.
“Millions of Dutch people have turned the page. They’ve said goodbye to the ‘it can’t be done’ politics. They’ve chosen the positive forces and the politics that will help us look ahead.”
“Let’s go build, let’s go build,” the party faithful chanted, a reference to Mr Jetten’s plans to build 10 new cities in the housing crisis- hit Netherlands, and his vow to construct a new, more positive nation.
After his speech, he described himself as a “progressive patriot”. He told reporters in Leiden: “It is important that also progressive parties show that we can be proud of our country but then also that we define that ourselves. How do we look at our country and how do we make sure that this country is part of the European Union.”
He added: “This is an historic election result, because we’ve shown not only to the Netherlands but also to the world, that it is possible to beat populist and extreme Right movements.”
Rob Jetten addresses party members as the exit poll results emerge – Peter Dejong/AP Photo
Rob Jetten arrives for the post-polls celebration party in Leiden with his partner Nicolas Keenan – Robin Utrecht/EPA/Shutterstock
Mr Wilders had hoped to secure a thumping majority that would shame other parties into forming a coalition government with him. Instead, he is expected to lose 10 seats.
All the major parties have ruled out going into coalition with his PVV, condemning the shock winner of the last election to political isolation.
The 64-year-old had promised a total ban on all asylum claims for four years, but centrist parties turned Right on migration and declared the “Wilders era” to be over.
Mr Wilders led in the polls for most of the race, only to lose momentum in the final days of the campaign. The final poll before the election had five parties, including the PVV, almost neck and neck.
In the final debate on Tuesday, Mr Wilders accused Mr Jetten of having a “Wilders obsession” and suggested that the well-groomed career politician should see a doctor.
Either Mr Jetten or Mr Wilders will have to navigate marathon coalition negotiations with multiple parties to reach a majority of 76 in the 150-seat parliament.
Among the possible parties for a D66-led government is GroenLinks-PVDA, which was predicted to take 20 seats – five fewer than the last election – in a vote contested by 27 parties.
PvdA members react after the poll results came in – Pierre Crom/Getty Images
That was an “extremely” disappointing result for Frans Timmermans, the former EU climate chief who was second in the polls for all of the campaign. He resigned as the Groenlinks-PVDA leader after the exit poll was released, saying he had failed to convince voters to support him.
The pro-business VVD was the main governing party in the Netherlands for 13 years and was formerly led by Mark Rutte, who left domestic politics in 2023.
Dilan Yeşilgöz, his successor as leader, is a hardliner on migration who is Turkish-born. She did not rule out a coalition with Mr Wilders in 2023, which was blamed for his victory. This time she took 23 seats, making the VVD the third largest party.
The centre-Right CDA, traditionally a big beast of Dutch politics, also enjoyed a resurgence. Led by Henri Bontenbal, who promised a return to “normal politics”, it overcame a poor 2023 election to win a predicted 19 seats, as opposed to five in 2023.
JA21, which styles itself as a conservative liberal party, was predicted to win nine seats and could be part of the mix in coalition talks that often take months.
Coalition beckons
Rob Jetten poses for a selfie after arriving to cast his vote in The Hague – Ramon van Flymen/Shutterstock
A possible coalition could be D66, the CDA, the VVD and JA21. Mr Timmermans’s resignation clears the way for Groenlinks-PVDA to also join the coalition with the VVD after Ms Yeşilgöz ruled out an alliance with him.
Mr Wilders’s shock landslide almost two years ago was the first time a hard-Right party had won a general election in the Netherlands.
After six months of negotiations with three other parties, a Right-wing coalition was announced – but only after he agreed that he would not become prime minister.
He pulled out of the resulting largely ineffectual coalition after little less than a year in a row over the slow pace of the “strictest ever” asylum policy, triggering the latest election. He demanded his allies sign up to a new 10-point plan including using the army to close the borders and deporting Syrians, which they refused.
Mr Wilders now insists that, had he been prime minister, things would have been different.
Geert Wilders led in the polls for most of the race, only to lose momentum in the final days of the campaign – Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP via Getty Images
Former allies have made it clear that Mr Wilders, who would castigate the government on social media, has burnt his bridges.
The centrist parties made defeating him the major theme of a campaign dominated by the perennial outsider, who lives under 24/7 police protection because of his anti-Islamic rhetoric. His exclusion from power will be pored over for clues by European governments trying to contain their own insurgent Right-wing parties.
Mr Wilders had vowed to leave the UN Refugee Convention and close the borders in a country where resentment over migration has grown because of the housing crisis.
Some have suggested voters seemed more concerned about the lack of affordable housing and healthcare than immigration.
But there is widespread anger at new asylum centres being built to find accommodation for 50,000 asylum seekers and ease a crisis that led to migrants sleeping on the streets and centre floors.
Last year, there were 33,760 asylum claims in the Netherlands, a slight drop from 2023, with migrants mostly arriving from Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The total number of refugees hosted in a country of just under 18 million people was about 260,000 by the end of last year, including 120,000 Ukrainians.
“Wilders will take the highway to the comfort zone, which is perennial opposition,” said Deniz Horzum, a former government official turned commentator.
“Jetten moved his party to the Right on immigration, into an area GroenLinks-PVDA didn’t want to touch. They went from lecturing to listening. This is highly uncomfortable stuff for some in D66, but it paid off.”
Mr Horzum, who used to advise Mr Jetten when he was a minister, said: “He’s been able to cast himself as the anti-Wilders and develop a positive narrative around patriotism that resonated well.
“He literally reclaimed the Dutch flag by holding campaign rallies in front of the three stripes. This also caused unease with some of the purists, but it resonated with a large part of the electorate as lots of people feel this is their Netherlands as well, not just Wilders’ version of it.”
Hester Borm, a D66 parliamentary candidate, said before the exit poll that the rise in support for her party had “exceeded our expectations.”
Ms Borm was full of praise for Jetten policies such as building the 10 new cities, telling The Telegraph: “Rob Jetten has us dreaming again. He decided we would not fatally accept populism will win again but reconnect with society again.”
