Liberals and the far right tie in the Netherlands with a major setback for Islamophobic Wilders

BrusselsSurprise in the Netherlands. Against all oddsThe liberal D66 party, led by Rob Jetten, has tied in Wednesday's Dutch elections with the Islamophobic Geert Wilders. The progressive liberals won 26 seats, 17 more than in the previous elections. This significant increase contrasts sharply with that of the far right, which in the elections two years ago was the most voted party by a wide margin, obtaining 37 seats. This year, despite polls predicting another comfortable victory, it lost 11 seats, falling to 26. Thus, despite the virtual tie, the most likely scenario at this point is the return of a centrist government to the Netherlands.

At this stage, 98% of the votes have been counted, and it is still unclear which of the two leaders has won the election, even by a narrow margin. In the Netherlands, the winner of the elections is crucial, as that party is automatically tasked with forming a government. Regardless of the final outcome, however, Wilders faces a very difficult path to governing, as all the major Dutch parties have vetoed him. In contrast, parliamentary arithmetic strongly favors a new government led by Jetten, with various center, center-left, and center-right parties highly willing to form an alternative government to the one previously led by the far right. In fact, Jetten has no choice but to reach out to the other political parties if he wants to form a government. The Dutch electoral system fosters a highly fragmented Parliament, and political forces are compelled to form multi-party coalitions to govern. This year's winner, D66, for example, only secured 27 of the 150 seats in the House of Commons.

D66 will be able to open negotiations with the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) – also liberal, though more conservative – which came in third place. Polls predicted a major setback for the VVD, the party of Mark Rutte, the longest-serving former prime minister in the country's history and current NATO Secretary General, but it managed to salvage its position, losing only one seat and dropping to 23. In fourth place is the social-exocratic coalition, led by Frans Timmermans, one of the main proponents of the European Union's green agenda. However, the elections went worse for him than the polls had predicted and than the previous elections: he lost five seats, ending up with 20. After the poll results were released, he expressed his "deep disappointment" and announced his resignation as leader of the progressive coalition.

He's hot on his heels the new sensation of Dutch politicsThe leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal, Henri Bontenbal, has almost quintupled his party's results, going from five to eighteen seats, although initial polls predicted even better results and placed him in second position. Both in terms of representation and the ideological space he occupies, Bontenbal is another name that seems highly likely to enter the new government with the progressive liberals of D66 and the conservative liberals of VVD, with potential participation from the Green and Social Democratic coalition.

The end of instability and the return to the center

Pre-election polls already indicated that the Dutch were tired of the instability caused by Wilders. In fact, in the previous legislature, it took the far right more than 200 days to gather enough support to form a government, which only lasted thirteen months, as Wilders himself brought it down in order to further tighten asylum laws. Even if he had won, Wilders would have found it very difficult to govern. All the major parties, even those that had previously supported him, had vetoed him during the election campaign because of the instability he had caused during the last legislature. It's worth remembering that, even if he had won the last election, the parties that supported Wilders had already made it a condition that he not be part of the government, and therefore, they backed a consensus candidate for prime minister: former high-ranking intelligence official Dick Schoof.

The meteoric rise of two parties and leaders who represent the exact opposite of the Islamophobic and populist Wilders is telling. Both Jetten, who won the elections, and Bontenbal achieved strong electoral results simply by promising stability and dialogue. This formula, aided by Wilders's poor governance, seems to have worked for them in ousting the far right from power.