Dutch election results: far-right and centrist parties in tight race to top as vote count continues – Europe live

Geert Wilders’s PVV inches ahead of D66 but centrist party expected to lead talks to form next coalition government

The vote count is almost done in the Dutch parliamentary election, with the far-right PVV party of anti-immigration firebrand Geert Wilders narrowly ahead of the centrist D66 with 99.6% votes counted.

But the difference between the two parties is just under 1,400 votes, and many more are still yet to be counted, including parts of Amsterdam and 135,000 votes from abroad.

While it definitely symbolically matters whether PVV or D66 will come out on top, it seems that it will be the centrist with their charismatic leader, Rob Jetten, who will likely lead the talks to form the next government, with Wilders going back to the opposition.

As my colleague Jon Henley noted, the shift in the early hours of Thursday is unlikely to alter the composition of the next government coalition. All major mainstream parties have ruled out governing with Wilders after he brought down the last coalition led by his PVV.