Netherlands set to elect youngest ever prime minister after right-wing vote collapses
Early results from Wednesday's election suggest D66 leader Rob Jetten was in the strongest position to form a Dutch government
The Netherlands is set to elect its youngest ever prime minister after the centrist D66 party made huge electoral gains at the expense of the country's far-right leader Geert Wilders.
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Early results from Wednesday's election suggest D66 leader Rob Jetten was in the strongest position to form a Dutch government, as his party and Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) were both projected to take 26 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament.
Exit polls had indicated a narrow victory for the progressive D66, but the anti-immigration PVV achieved a slightly stronger showing than predicted after 90 per cent of the votes were counted early on Thursday.
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This result was still a sharp fall from Wilders' record showing in 2023 and represented huge gains for the D66, which has almost tripled its seats.
The Netherlands has been governed by coalitions for more than a century because of its proportional representation system.
With all major mainstream parties ruling out governing with Wilders, even if the final results put the PVV in first, a path has now been opened for Jetten to become PM.
"We have today achieved D66’s best ever result,” Jetten told supporters at the party’s election gathering in Leiden.
"Millions of Dutch people have turned a page. They have said goodbye to the politics of negativity, of hate, of ‘it can’t be done.
"Let’s also turn the page on Wilders and work on a splendid future for our beautiful country … in the coming years, we will do everything we can to show all Dutch people … that politics and the government can be there for them again."
It means Wilders' short-lived period in power is over for the time being, after the PVV's shock victory in 2023 tore down the last coalition and brought in the most extreme government in the country’s recent history.
Wilders pulled the PVV out of government in June after the other partners refused to endorse his anti-refugee plans, which were seen as unworkable or illegal.
This removal triggered an election, taking place less than a year after Wilders took office.
Wilders defended his decision to quit whilst acknowledging his party was unlikely to be part of the new government.
"The voter has spoken. We had hoped for a different outcome but we stuck to our guns,” he posted on social media.
The PVV had led consistently in the polls until days before the election, which was dominated by migration, healthcare costs and the Netherlands’ acute housing crisis.
But a late surge from the mainstream centre-left to moderate right parties meant all of Wilder's outgoing coalition members lost heavily. One party, the New Social Contract, failed to win any seats at all.
Under the Netherlands electoral system, parties will gain one MP for each 0.67 per cent of the vote share - a threshold cleared by 15 of the 27 parties contesting this election.
It means MPs will be represented from parties for the over-50s, for youth, for animals, for a universal basic income and for sport.
With 76 seats needed for victory, the three most recent governments had been made up of coalitions of four parties, with the next government set to continue this trend.
It was a bad night for the centre-left GreenLeft/Labour alliance (GL/PvdA), who finished third with 20 seats - five fewer than in the outgoing parliament.
The poor result prompted party leader Frans Timmermans to step down.
"It is time for me to take a step back and hand over the leadership of our movement to the next generation," the former European Commission vice-president said.
The Christian Democrats (CDA), who had campaigned for return to “decent” and “responsible” politics in the Netherlands, performed well as they nearly quadrupled their seat tally to 19.
One possible governing coalition could be a broad-based alliance involving D66, CDA, GL/PvdA and the liberal-conservative VVD - the only member of the outgoing government to improve its seat tally, with 23.
But this may be unlikely, as the VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz “repeatedly said she wants a rightwing coalition” and would work with the radical right JA21, which gained eight seats to finish on nine.
Coalition-building in the Netherlands can take months, as potential partners negotiate an agreement and must undergo a confidence vote in parliament.
The future cabinet's biggest issue to tackle will be the nation's housing shortage, estimated at about 400,000 homes in a nation of 18 million, alongside soaring healthcare costs.