The Netherlands goes to the polls on Wednesday in its first post-Rutte general election which sees the margin between Left and Right too close to call – and an extraordinary 60 per cent of voters still undecided or waiting until the last minute to vote strategically.
The final poll of a mild-mannered campaign indicated on Tuesday that the liberal VVD, where Turkish-born Dilan Yesilgöz has replaced Mark Rutte as leader, remains stable on 27 seats in the 150-seat parliament – where it has now been matched by the left-wing alliance of Labour and GreenLeft.
Those two amalgamated parties have been benefitting from the fact that as former EU climate commissioner, their leader Frans Timmermans resonates with environmentally aware young voters. Belatedly they have also benefitted from an “anyone but Wilders” surge among their own ranks.
Although Freedom Party Geert Wilders began this campaign in four or fifth place, he has abandoned his anti-Muslim rhetoric and has focused instead on domestic issues such as immigration, inflation, housing, and the pressures facing low-income families. As a result, his party is placed third on 26 seats, according to the I&O poll.
Wilders scored a notable hit on Timmermans during a TV debate on Monday when the latter urged a woman in the audience with an ill family member to “be patient” while a new government looked at the rising cost of healthcare, which he said could take “some time”.
The Freedom Party leader immediately raised the indignation level in the studio by saying it was all too easy for Mr Timmermans to expect the woman to remain patient when he was being paid, Wilders claimed, €15,000 a month in his EU pension alone.
Timmerman hit back on Tuesday in response to the latest poll showing the Freedom Party in third place, with the potential to join a centre-right coalition after almost a decade in the wilderness outside government.
“I ask everyone voting on Wednesday”, said Timmermans, “do you really want to wake up the next morning in a country where Mr Wilders leads the biggest party or could decide the composition of the government?”
The final poll also shows that for the first time independent MP, Pieter Omtzigt, and his fledgling party New Social Contract (NSC), have fallen out of the top three after he appeared to obfuscate when asked whether he would be willing to take the job of prime minister.
In less than a week, Omtzigt’s lack of clarity has seen NSC drop from second place and potentially 25 seats to fourth place with 21.
This is reminiscent of the farmer-citizen party BBB, whose founder, Carolien van der Plas, was also ambivalent about accepting the job of premier and which has now plunged from the top three to sixth place on just six seats – behind centre-left D66 on eight seats.
As the Dutch wait to see if they’ll have their first female prime minister, there’s been one jarring incident in the campaign: a teenager has been arrested for attacking far-right Forum for Democracy leader, Thierry Baudet, with a bottle. Baudet, who wasn’t seriously injured, said the attack was “political”.
