Tight race in Dutch election as anti-Islam populist Wilders’ hope of power declines

Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom party is facing a tight race in Wednesday’s Dutch election, and even if he wins the vote his hopes of forming a new government appear minimal.

Wilders was the clear winner last time Dutch voters went to the polls in November 2023, but final opinion polls hours before the vote suggest a fall in his support.

Dutch voters are grappling with a series of crises, from a chronic housing shortage to overcrowded asylum centres. The cost of living is rising with sky-high rents and healthcare costs.

Unlike last time, Wilders’ rivals are refusing to work with him after he brought down his own coalition government last June.

Voting at most of the country’s more than 10,000 polling stations starts at 07:30 local time (06:30 GMT) on Wednesday and ends at 21:00 (20:00 GMT).

Commentators believe it is more important who comes second in the vote than first, as it could decide who will form the next government.

Even if Wilders’ party comes top, the next Dutch government is more likely to come from the centre left or centre right.

The race is wide open, and more than a third of Dutch voters were seen as undecided on the eve of the election.

“It’s one of the most important elections, because people need to have their faith restored,” says Sarah de Lange, professor of Dutch politics at Leiden University.

As many as 15 parties are set to win a share of parliament’s 150 seats, but opinion polls suggest four will stand out. Apart from Wilders’ PVV, there is GreenLeft-Labour under ex-EU top official Frans Timmermans, Rob Jetten’s liberal D66 and the centre-right Christian Democrats of Henri Bontenbal.

For almost half of Dutch voters, the housing crisis is top priority, with a shortage of almost 400,000 homes, in a population of 18 million.

Housing has taken centre stage in TV debates ahead of Wednesday’s vote, and while Wilders has blamed the crisis on migration, others point to a rise in single-person households and planning gridlock.

Most of the parties have vowed to tackle the issue head-on. Frans Timmermans promises at least 100,000 new homes per year if his party takes office, while Rob Jetten of the liberals says the solution lies on building on 1% of agricultural land.

Unemployment hit 4% last month, which is low in European terms but the highest rate for four years in the Netherlands. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits rose 8.8% over the past year, signalling growing anxiety among workers about job security.

Considered for so long the outsider of Dutch politics, Geert Wilders played a key role in the last government, both in setting it up and in bringing it down after only 11 months, in a row over immigration.

His coalition partners refused to let him become prime minister, but having former spy chief Dick Schoof lead a technocrat cabinet was a workaround that ultimately failed.

Former coalition partner Dilan Yesilgöz, the leader of the conservative-liberal VVD, told Wilders his “party exists as one man with a Twitter account and nothing more”.

Yesilgöz’s jibe was not completely out of place as Wilders does not allow his PVV to have members. Yesilgöz’s own VVD party is polling down in fifth place.

Wilders was on the backfoot ahead of the vote, having to apologise to Frans Timmermans after two Freedom party MPs posted AI-generated images of the left-wing leader being led away in handcuffs.

When Wilders won two years ago, Matthijs Rooduijn of the University of Amsterdam says he was able to harness the votes of more radical voters on the right who were worried about Islam and Eurosceptic along with less radical voters.

“People called him Milders, a milder version of himself,” says Prof Rooduijn, who points out that Wilders then put on ice many of his anti-Islam policies to appear more palatable.

Although Wilders no longer talks of banning mosques and the Koran, he sees Islam as “the greatest existential threat to our freedom”, a view Prof Rooduijn describes as “really a key element of his nativism – an exclusionary form of nationalism”.

In one TV debate, Wilders said “take a walk [in central Rotterdam] on shopping night on Saturday evening and it’s like you’re in Marrakesh; it’s not the Netherlands any more”.

Left-wing leader Timmermans has accused him of scapegoating an entire section of society: “You’re blaming Islam.”

But the risk Wilders faces now is of losing both the more radical voters, if they fail to turn out, and the less radical voters who could drift to other parties, including the anti-immigration Ja21.

“Right now I don’t think it’s very likely Wilders will be part of a government coalition,” Prof Rooduijn believes.

It can take weeks – if not months – for parties to form a coalition, but if the centre right takes power, Christian Democrat Henri Bontenbal could be in the frame to lead it.

His CDA party has staged a remarkable comeback in that only two years ago they won just five seats.

Bontenbal believes Dutch voters are looking now at a return to “what I’ll call ‘boring politics’. The Netherlands is done with populism”.

He has not had a great campaign, though.

Days after he defended the right of religious schools to teach that homosexual relationships were wrong, he went back on himself and admitted he had made a mistake.