The pond behind the Binnehof, the seat of the Dutch Parliament and the prime minister’s office, dawned this Wednesday as still as those that appear in the paintings of the Dutch golden age exhibited in the neighboring Maurtishuis museum, but the image could not be more deceptive regarding the electoral result that was taking place in the Netherlands.

According to the exit polls published at the close of the polling stations, the party with the most votes, by far, would be the far-right PVV (Party for Freedom), a major triumph for its founder and undisputed leader, Geert Wilders, the most resilient of the politicians who have emerged in this electoral niche in the last two decades. The withdrawal of liberal leader Mark Rutte in July, after 13 years in power, would have created the necessary space for the party to achieve the best result in its history and even be the party with the most votes.

The PVV could have 35 seats, almost double those it obtained in 2021 and the same as the VVD, Rutte’s party, won then (31); His replacement, the Minister of Justice, Dilan Yesilgöz, would have been left with only 23, therefore behind the alliance between the Social Democrats and the Greens, who that year have joined forces around a single candidate, Frans Timmermans, who would come in second place. according to the survey by the public broadcaster NOS. “Nobody really expected it, I have had a feeling of déjà vu with Brexit or Donald Trump,” summarized Leonie De Jonge, professor at the University of Groningen, specialist in the far-right.

With more than half of the voters undecided up to 24 hours before the elections, the PVV has only slipped in at the last minute among the parties with the option of finishing at the head of the votes, a change that reinforced Timmermans’ message that It was necessary to rally the progressive vote. For weeks, the elections seemed to be limited to a battle between three parties: the liberals, the progressives and the new political star, Pieter Omtzigt, who would come in fourth place; His emergence with a powerful message of political regeneration probably deprived not only the Christian Democratic Party, from which he came, of votes, but also the VDD.

Under the indecision of millions of voters, an electoral earthquake was brewing. Wilders’ victory places the Netherlands in a unique situation in its history. The country’s traditional political plurality forces the formation of coalition governments and the norm is that the party with the most votes takes the initiative. The question is whether Wilders will find partners for the trip he proposes to embark on to the Netherlands. At the moment it is only clear that the Government formation negotiations will be long and complicated.

“I will be the prime minister of all the Dutch, wherever they come from,” said Wilders this Wednesday night in an interview with public television in which he extended his hand to the VVD, the party of Omtzigt (New Social Contract) and the Citizen Peasant Movement (BBB, the party that has capitalized on the protest of the rural world) and “other parties” to govern. He promised to be “reasonable”: “We are not going to talk about mosques, the Koran or Islamic schools but about our agenda of hope” and the asylum policy. “We want to govern and with 35 seats we are going to do it,” the far-right leader promised, euphoric, in his appearance before his supporters.

The Dutch Parliament has 150 seats so it is necessary to add 76 to achieve a majority. Although the liberal candidate, Yesilgöz, had opened the door to including the PVV among her coalition partners, in Tuesday night’s debate she reacted with skepticism to Wilders’ promise that he would be the prime minister “of all the Dutch, be it whatever their origin”, in view of the fact that their program speaks, for example, of eliminating Islam from the Netherlands. This Wednesday, she limited herself to pointing out that Wilders now has the initiative and it is up to him to demonstrate whether he is capable of weaving a coalition. “We will never be part of a coalition that discriminates between the Dutch,” said Timmermans, in an exemplary tone, who admitted that “democracy has spoken” and congratulated Wilders on his victory.

In the Netherlands, campaigning is allowed until the day of the elections and, this Wednesday, in the center of The Hague, volunteers from all parties continued to distribute leaflets and ask to vote. For GroenLinks-PvdA, the alliance formed between the social democratic party and the environmentalists, the main argument in the hours before the elections was the strategic vote of the progressives. “It seems that there are many people who hesitate until the last minute and perhaps the prospect of having a far-right prime minister may make them consider whether it would not be better to vote left,” explained Joos Artsen, a 29-year-old volunteer.

The good result of the Timmermans list, which would obtain 25 seats, eight more than both parties added in the previous elections, indicates that the message resonated with progressive voters but not enough to stop the conservative tsunami led by the far-right Wilders. . In view of the polls, the extreme right also practiced strategic voting. The PVV’s message is extremely harsh towards immigrants, whom it considers guilty of the shortage of public housing in the Netherlands, an accusation that does not hold up with the official figures in hand but which has connected well with the concerns of many citizens, very critical of the asylum policy of the previous governments.