The centrist Liberal Party D66 held a narrow lead in Wednesday’s Dutch parliamentary elections, according to the first exit poll conducted by Ipsos I&O.
Just behind them is the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, indicating that either party could still come out on top.
Ipsos suggested that D66 would win 27 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives, of which 25 would go to the PVV.
Under the Dutch system, where no party wins an absolute majority, 76 seats are needed to form a coalition government.
This is a significant change from the 2023 elections, where the PVV won in a landslide with 37 seats, followed by the Green Left-wing Labor Party (GL-PvdA) and the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) with 25 and 20 seats respectively.
The VVD is expected to win 23 seats, while the GL-PvdA is expected to win a lower-than-expected 20 seats.
Ipsos exit polls are preliminary indicators that are subject to change, but data from past elections is highly reliable. In 2023, Ipsos suggested that the PVV would win 35 seats, with a deviation of only 1.2%.
For other parties, the largest deviation from the final result was only 0.5%.
Ipsos predicted turnout would be slightly lower than in 2023. By 7:45 p.m., provisional turnout was 65%, slightly lower than the 66% recorded during the same period in the previous election. The total voter turnout in 2023 was 77.7%.
That means the final results could differ by one to three seats, and very rarely by more. With only two seats separating D66 and PVV, the final result is still to be determined.
In the final stages of the campaign, Rob Jetten’s D66 made a sudden jump in the polls, jumping to the top just days before election day after initially predicting it would be lagging behind PVV, GL-PvdA and CDA.
It also marks an important comeback for D66, which suffered heavy losses and only won nine seats in 2023, down from 24 in 2021.
The GL-PvdA, led by former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans, has maintained a stable position in the polls, not deviating significantly from its results in 2023, when the party won 25 seats.
Henri Bontenval, the new leader of the Christian Democratic Party CDA, is a popular candidate for prime minister and is considered a more moderate bridge between left and right. His party is expected to win 19 seats.
His “courtesy and respect” And the phrase “back to work” appears to have resonated with voters in connection with the impasse that followed the previous government’s collapse in June over immigration, just a year after taking office.
PVV’s Wilders once again campaigned hard to curb illegal immigration, leading to his victory in 2023. The highly controversial issue also led to the collapse of the government, with Mr Wilders and his party leaving the four-party coalition and stepping down.
Infighting within the last coalition government led to criticism that the Netherlands, long a prominent voice within the European Union, was sometimes seen as not as fully committed to the continent as it was under longtime leader Mark Rutte, now NATO secretary-general.
Wednesday night’s exit polls suggest a difficult path ahead for coalition talks. Although Wilders has fewer seats compared to the 2023 election, his party will maintain an important role.
Other small and far-right parties also gained significant seats, with JA21 increasing from just one seat to nine in the exit poll, and Forum for Democracy (FvD) expected to win six seats, up from three.
However, the outlook for the far right’s role in government remains uncertain.
D66, GL-PvdA and CDA all rejected far-right governance and said his decision to crush the outgoing coalition government showed Mr Wilders as an unreliable partner.
Mr Wilders rejected claims that he had failed to deliver on his 2023 campaign promises despite being the largest party in parliament, accusing other parties of hindering his plans.