Major parties rule out coalition with rightwinger, giving his party little chance of being part of government
Voting is under way in parliamentary elections in the Netherlands that polls suggest could again be won by the anti-immigration firebrand Geert Wilders’s Freedom party (PVV), although there is little chance of it being part of the next government.
The PVV, which finished a shock first in the previous election and formed a four-party all-conservative coalition that lasted barely a year before collapsing, is marginally ahead in the polls and forecast to return between 24 and 28 MPs to the 150-seat parliament.
However, the far-right party’s popularity has dipped since 2023, when it won 37 seats, and all major parties have ruled out going into government with Wilders, who pulled the plug on the outgoing coalition in June in a row over his radical anti-refugee plans.
At the end of a campaign dominated by migration, healthcare costs and the Netherland’s acute housing crisis, the centre-left Green Left/Labour party alliance (GL/PvdA), led by the former European commissioner Frans Timmermans, was lying a close second, projected to win between 22 and 26 seats.
