Dutch centrist liberals neck and neck in close finish with populist Wilders

Rob Gitten’s centrist liberal D66 party is competing with anti-Islam populist candidate Geert Wilders in the Dutch elections, according to the latest voting forecasts.

With more than 97% of the votes counted, both D66 and Wilders’ Freedom Party are on track to win 26 seats in the 150-member parliament, Dutch news agency DPA forecast early Thursday.

Initial opinion polls had put Cetin in the lead. He told his supporters: “Millions of Dutch people have turned the page and said goodbye to the politics of negativity.”

A pessimistic Wilders earlier admitted the result was not what he wanted after losing at least ten seats but said he achieved his second best result ever.

Three other parties were not far behind, including the Conservative Liberals, who won 22 seats, followed by the left-wing Green Labor Party and the Christian Democrats.

Wilders was leading in the polls throughout the election campaign, but after that He pulled the plug on his coalition In June, in the midst of a row over asylum and immigration, all mainstream leaders made clear they did not want to work with him again.

He admits he is unlikely to be able to form a government himself, but said on Thursday that if his party tops the vote, he should make the first attempt. Even without a clear victory, Giten – who has waged an impressive campaign – will have a stronger chance of leading the next administration.

Just a few weeks ago, polls showed D66 gaining just 12 seats, but the 38-year-old Liberal leader has built on a brilliant performance in a succession of debates and television interviews.

The fact that he also took part in a TV quiz show called The Smartest Person in the weeks leading up to the vote added to his public profile.

Cetin was careful not to declare victory on Wednesday night, despite the partisan mood among his supporters.

Dylan Jeselgosz’s liberal-conservative VVD was also headed for a successful night in third place, and her party would be a good fit for any potential coalition led by Cetin.

As Wednesday’s elections approached, voters knew the outcome would be on the brink, as five parties were vying to win. Wilders’ Freedom Party won 37 seats in November 2023, but many of those voters will be frustrated by the realization that he will have difficulty finding parties to work with him again.

It took seven months for Wilders to reach an agreement with coalition partners in 2024, but he managed to bring down the government after 11 months.

Rob Gitten explained that he is looking for a broad coalition that is “stable and ambitious,” and noted that it is unprecedented for the winning party to have fewer than 30 seats in Parliament.

He named former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans’s green-left Labor Party (PvdA) as a potential coalition partner, along with Jeselgoz’s conservative liberals and the revitalized Christian Democratic CDA.

The exit poll was bad news for Timmermans, whose left-wing party has long held second place in the polls and is now set to come in fourth.

“Better times lie ahead,” he promised his supporters late Wednesday. He added, “Of course, I am very disappointed,” and announced his resignation and took responsibility for the result.

Timmermans and Wilders are both in their early 60s and entered politics at the same time, and there is now a sense that Dutch voters are ready to try something new.

But Wilders said he was not going anywhere: “You won’t get rid of me until I’m 80.” He remained optimistic about the performance of his Freedom Party: “I would naturally have preferred to see more seats…but we still got our second-best result.”

Matthijs Rodwin of the University of Amsterdam said that Wilders’ party lost the support of many of its moderate voters to other parties, in addition to many from the more extreme side.

But he added that “the losses could have been worse,” given that Wilders himself dismantled the last coalition and ran a less active campaign than his rivals.

There was palpable excitement as D66 supporters gathered to watch the results at a music venue in Leiden, a university city located between Amsterdam and The Hague. As the poll results became clear, the phrase “Yes, we can” was repeated as a kind of party slogan in the hall.

The man who is now likely to be the youngest prime minister in modern Dutch history took to the stage and told his supporters: “We did it – the best result D66 has ever achieved.”

“We also know that millions of Dutch people voted for other parties, and I also feel a great responsibility for that [all of them]“We will do everything we can in the coming years to show all Dutch people that politics and government can be there for them again so that they can think big again and act big again so that the Netherlands can move forward,” said Rob Gitten.

This election was partly about immigration and overcrowded asylum centres, but the bigger issue for voters was a chronic housing shortage of nearly 400,000 homes, in a population of 18 million.

Cetin’s party said it would build 10 cities as part of its plan to address the crisis.

D66 supporter Elaine said: “It was a campaign of optimism, it showed that the Dutch are tired of two years of downtime, we recognize the big challenges and we want to progress on those challenges.” He added, “This shows that the Dutch are looking forward to a prime minister capable of uniting the country and facing the major challenges facing our country and the world.”

Another potential coalition partner for the Liberals is the Christian Democrats, who were looking down just two years ago with a handful of seats. Now they are expected to win 18.

“What a fantastic result – two years ago we would not have dared to dream of this,” party leader Henri Bontenball told supporters as they chanted his name.