Tension was running high at all party headquarters in the Netherlands on Wednesday, November 22, following the suspense created by polls predicting a highly uncertain outcome to the parliamentary elections. Early estimates caused surprise: According to Ipsos, the Party for Freedom (PVV), Geert Wilders' far-right formation, was poised to win 35 seats in the 150-member Second Chamber. This would be 18 more than in the 2021 elections, a score never achieved by the party created in 2006 by the populist anti-immigration MP.
According to estimates with a small margin of error, Wilders' party was to come out well ahead of the Environmentalist and Socialist left led by former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans (25 seats). The radical left also lost almost half its elected representatives - it has five left.
The People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD, liberal) of Dilan Yesilgöz, who succeeded the resigning Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the head of this liberal formation, fell by the wayside: The polls – the other losers in this election – still presented it as a possible winner on the eve of the election, but it dropped from 34 to 24 seats. And the other parties in the outgoing government were just as hard hit. The Liberal Democrats of D66 lost 15 of their 24 seats, the Christian Democrats gave up half of theirs, leaving them with five instead of 10.
Caroline van der Plas's Citizen Farmer Movement (BBB) (6 seats) fell far short of the performance it had hoped for, but another newcomer, the New Social Contract party recently created by dissident Christian Democrat Pieter Omtzigt, took 20 seats. Ultimately, the campaign proved too long for the man whom the polls had, up until November 16, presented as the potential winner of the election.
On that day, yet another opinion poll suggesting a possible rise in far-right support triggered a "strategic" reflex on the part of voters on both the left and the right, which penalized Omtzigt. The left hoped to strengthen their camp to counter the risk of a government including Wilders, and the right hoped to ensure that a right-wing coalition became a possibility. Caught in the middle, Omtzigt lost a dozen seats compared to initial forecasts.
On Wednesday evening, Wilders quickly appeared before supporters gathered in Scheveningen, and promised to satisfy the two million citizens who voted for his party and to "take back control of the country." He said that "the asylum tsunami must be stopped, people must have more money in their wallets," adding that talking "about the Koran and mosques" was now out of the question.
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