The progressive liberals of D66 won the elections in the Netherlands this Wednesday, ahead of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) led by veteran Geert Wilders, 62, and which is suffering a collapse compared to the last elections. According to the first exit poll, published by public television, the former would obtain 27 seats out of a total of 150, compared to 25 for the ultras. It is a scenario full of uncertainty, but it seems feasible that future negotiations will end up leading to a moderate government led by the socioliberals, with their young leader – Rob Jetten, only 38 years old – at the helm.
Although Wilders had led the polls since the electoral advance was confirmed, the rest of the parties had closed the gap in recent days. To the point that on Tuesday an Ipsos poll (the same pollster that prepared the exit poll for public television) pointed to a three-way tie in the lead, with the classic center-left (GroenLinks-PvdA) slightly ahead. I already detected a trend: D66 was already third, a very short distance from the first two.
The rise of the socioliberals is vertical: it would go from 9 to 27 seats, according to the first exit poll, a still image that was confirmed half an hour later by a second poll. The PVV, on the other hand, leaves 12 seats. And the social democrats and greens go from 25 to 20 deputies, seeing themselves surpassed by the conservative VVD. In fifth position are the Christian Democrats of the CDA, who remain at 19, with a very notable gain of 14.
The recently concluded election campaign has been tense, and has been dominated by immigration and asylum, housing and the cost of healthcare. Uncertainty has remained until the end, with high indecision among voters. Just over 13.4 million citizens had the right to vote.
If the exit polls are confirmed in the next few hours, Wilders could have reached the limit of his possibilities, remaining – once again – on the verge of being prime minister in the face of the general veto of the moderate forces, which seem to be strengthened on this occasion. Leading a Government was the greatest desire of this openly xenophobic veteran politician after almost three decades as a deputy in Parliament. It will be very far away.
The ultra leader himself has implicitly acknowledged his defeat, shortly after the second exit poll was announced. “The voters have spoken. We expected a different result, but we stood firm. We are more determined than ever and we remain the second, and perhaps even the largest, party in the Netherlands,” Wilders wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
In 2023, when the ultra won comfortably, with more than 23% of the votes and 37 seats, the Government emerged from the pact between four right-wing forces led by Wilders’ own group, one of the most veteran of the European extreme right. That was his great opportunity to demonstrate that he was up to the task of government. It failed: that Executive could only remain in power for 11 months. It was, in fact, he himself who blew it up, by failing to obtain the strict asylum laws he advocated. He did, however, blame his right-wing partners.
This last stage, unstable and chaotic, has made the attributes of moderation shine again in the Dutch political landscape. Aside from the great victor of the night, D66 with its young leader Jetten, the Christian democracy of the CDA has gone from being obscured to the point of practical irrelevance to making the principles of decency and responsibility it advocates permeate the political debate. However, some last-minute statements by its leader, Henri Bontebal (42 years old) about the primacy of freedom of education even if it clashed – in orthodox centers – with the constitutional prohibition of discrimination, has caused him to retreat in the polls. His final result at the polls will be good, but worse than expected.
However, the alliance between social democrats and environmentalists is falling, perhaps due to the resistance that their candidate, the former vice president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans (64), arouses in a Netherlands that has been shifting to the right for years. That could have taken its toll on him: although he has held up better than other traditional forces, everything indicates that he will be far from D66, which seems to eat up a good part of his electorate.
In the Netherlands, 0.66% of the vote is enough to obtain a seat. Hence the great fragmentation: in the last elections, in 2023, up to 15 parties achieved parliamentary representation. The same number of formations that will now be in the chamber, according to the first polls. This Wednesday there were 27 formations on the ballot, although not all of them were presented in all the constituencies of the country.
Agreeing on a coalition can be a slow, tedious and bumpy process. The third and fourth governments of the conservative Mark Rutte – today Secretary General of NATO – took 225 and 299 days, respectively. And the current outgoing Executive, headed by Dick Schoof, needed 223 days of negotiations. Nothing to do with what was common decades ago: the fastest formation to date was achieved in 1948, when in just 31 days the social democrat Willem Drees managed to form a Government.
This Friday, when the scrutiny is completed – although the electoral board will not publish the final result until November 7 – the first meeting between party leaders will be held and an explorer will be appointed. He will be the person in charge of analyzing the type of coalition proposed by the formations. The report of these consultations will be sent to Parliament before the deputies take office.
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