Dutch voters head to the polls in knife-edge election focused on housing and Wilders

dutch Voters head to the polls in the general election on Wednesday after a campaign focused on migration, the housing crisis and whether parties would work with anti-Islam MPs. geert wilders if his party for freedom Repeated its spectacular victory of two years ago.

The vote comes against a backdrop of deep polarization in the country of 18 million and recent violence at an anti-immigration rally in The Hague and protests across the country against new asylum seeker centres.

election There are suggestions Wilders’ party, which is calling for a complete ban on asylum seekers entering the Netherlands, is on track to win the largest number of seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, but other more moderate parties are closing the gap and pollsters have warned that many people wait until the last minute to decide whom to vote for.

Voting opens at 7:30 am and closes at 9 pm. Broadcasters publish an exit poll as soon as voting ends and update it half an hour later.

Voters can cast their ballots in everything from city hall to schools, but also historic windmills, churches, a zoo, a former prison in Arnhem and Amsterdam’s iconic Anne Frank House museum.

Once the results are known, the parties must negotiate the formation of the next coalition government in this country, whose system of proportional representation guarantees that no party can govern alone.

Mainstream parties have refused to work with Wilders, arguing that his decision to torpedo the outgoing four-party coalition in a dispute over the crackdown on migration earlier this year underlines that he is an unreliable coalition partner.

Rob Jetten, leader of the center-left D66 party, which has risen sharply during the election campaign, said in the final televised debate that his party wanted to rein in migration but also accommodate asylum seekers fleeing war and violence.

And he told Wilders that voters “can choose again tomorrow to listen to your angry hatred for the next 20 years, or with positive energy, just get to work and deal with this problem and solve it.”

Frans TimmermansThe former vice-president of the European Commission, who now leads the centre-left faction of the Labor Party and the Green Left, also took aim at Wilders in the final debate, saying he was “looking forward to the day – and that day is tomorrow – that we can end the Wilders era.”

Wilders rejected arguments that he had failed to deliver on his 2023 campaign promises despite being the largest party in parliament, blaming other parties for disrupting his plans.

He said, “If I had been Prime Minister – which I earned as leader of the largest party – we would have implemented that agenda.”

Wilders withdrew from becoming prime minister during negotiations after the last election because he did not have the support of potential coalition partners.

The election could see a reformist party, the New Social Contract, which won 20 seats in the last election, join the outgoing coalition, all but wiped off the Dutch political map, with surveys suggesting it may lose all or almost all of its seats. Its decline in popularity is an apparent reaction against the party’s decision to join a coalition with Wilders and follows the departure of its popular leader, Peter Omtzigt, who quit politics in April citing his mental health.