Dutch centrist surge masks stubborn far-right vote

The Netherlands woke up on 30 October to a result that looked like a centrist revival. Rob Jetten, the 38-year-old leader of Democrats 66 (D66), stood on the brink of becoming the country's youngest prime minister after his liberal-progressive party nearly tripled its parliamentary representation from nine seats to 26. Geert Wilders, the anti-immigration firebrand who had dominated Dutch politics for two decades, saw his Party for Freedom (PVV) shed 11 seats. Yet the headline numbers conceal a more stubborn reality: the PVV still matched D66 on seats and edged the popular vote by 28,400 ballots out of more than ten million cast. The far-right vote did not collapse. It fragmented.

A parliament that looks familiar

When the dust settled on the October 29 election, the Dutch lower house's 150 seats distributed in a way that would have been recognisable to observers of the November 2023 vote. The combined far-right bloc, PVV, Forum for Democracy (FvD) and Juiste Antwoord 2021 (JA21), secured 42 seats, barely moved from the 41 they held two years earlier. In 2021 that same bloc had commanded just 28 seats. The ascent has been steady, and the latest election did not reverse it. What changed was the internal distribution. The PVV dropped from roughly a quarter of the vote to about 17 per cent, its second-highest result ever. FvD, born as a Eurosceptic think tank in 2015 before entering electoral politics in 2017, grew from three seats to seven. JA21, a splinter from FvD that presents itself as a more coalition-friendly face for similar ideas, surged from one seat to nine. Armida van Rij, a researcher at the Centre for European Reform, described JA21 as "a PVV-light party, with equally extreme ideas but presenting themselves as more palatable to the electorate and other parties".

The Christian Democrats (CDA), another centre-right force, also gained ground, rising from nine seats to 18. But the arithmetic for a governing majority remains forbidding. Bernard Steunenberg, professor of political science at Leiden University, noted that the right-wing parties "are quite fragmented, and it's very difficult to form a right-wing coalition in which the PVV is participating". That fragmentation is not new. It is the condition that has defined Dutch coalition-building for years: a multiplicity of medium-sized parties, none able to command a majority, all requiring intricate negotiation.

Why Wilders lost seats but not voters

Wilders' PVV had entered government for the first time in 2024, joining a four-party coalition with the conservative-liberal VVD, the centrist New Social Contract (NSC) and the agrarian Farmers-Citizens Movement (BBB). The arrangement lasted 11 months. Wilders then pulled the plug, citing the coalition's refusal to adopt tougher migration measures. The snap election that followed was widely seen as a referendum on that decision. Voters appear to have punished the PVV not for its ideology but for its perceived failure to deliver on the bread-and-butter issues that dominate Dutch kitchen-table politics: affordable housing, healthcare waiting lists, and the cost of living. The PVV's campaign leaned heavily into migration rhetoric, but D66 and others refused to follow Wilders onto that terrain. Elizabeth Kuiper, associate director at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre, described Jetten's campaign as "Obama-esque", a nod to Barack Obama's 2008 "Yes We Can" message. D66 led a campaign that was "very positive" and focused on heartfelt issues, she told a conference organised by the EPC. "In these past years, we have seen [Dutch] voters feeling alienated from their governments, especially when it comes to affordable housing, green energy and healthcare," Kuiper said. "D66 approached these topics from a very positive perspective, whereas the others tried to win the competition with Wilders when it comes to migration, being much more toxic and making it a problem."

The positive campaign that worked

Jetten's strategy was a deliberate break from the pattern that has dominated European centre-right politics for a decade: the temptation to echo far-right language on migration in the hope of neutralising it. In the Netherlands, that approach had been tried by the VVD under Mark Rutte and by the CDA in various guises. It did not stop the PVV's rise. D66 bet instead on a platform that acknowledged voter anxiety about housing, energy costs and healthcare access but framed solutions in the language of collective capacity rather than exclusion. The slogan "We can do it", in English, a conscious echo of Obama, was plastered across billboards and social media. The party's gain of 17 seats suggests the bet paid off, at least for one election cycle. Steunenberg argued that centrist parties should rely on more "positive" campaigns that focus on what voters would like to see changed, "instead of framing it in very simplistic terms in which blame is being shifted towards different groups in society". Whether that lesson travels beyond the Dutch context is another matter.

Caution on European read-across

The Dutch result arrived at a moment when populist parties are polling strongly across the continent, from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) to Marine Le Pen's National Rally in France, from the Brothers of Italy to the Freedom Party of Austria. Commentators were quick to ask whether the Netherlands had found an antidote. Steunenberg urged modesty. "We should be modest in thinking what this means for other countries in the European Union, because it depends on how the political situation is in different member states," he said. "For example, in France, the centre, which is [President] Emmanuel Macron, has been very disappointing to many, and it has triggered a new movement towards [the fringes] on the left and right." The Dutch system, with its pure proportional representation and low threshold, produces a parliament that reflects the electorate's fragmentation with unusual fidelity. Most European democracies use majoritarian or mixed systems that amplify the largest party and suppress smaller ones. The Dutch far-right vote, split across three parties, would in many systems have consolidated behind a single dominant force. The lesson, if there is one, may be structural: proportional representation makes fragmentation visible, and visibility makes coalition arithmetic harder for extremes.

The coalition puzzle ahead

Jetten now faces the task that has defeated many Dutch leaders before him: assembling a majority from a splintered parliament. D66's 26 seats leave it 50 short of a majority. The CDA's 18 seats help. The VVD, NSC and BBB remain potential partners, though all carry baggage from the collapsed coalition. The left-wing bloc, Labour-GreenLeft (GroenLinks-PvdA) with 25 seats, the Socialist Party (SP) with nine, and smaller parties, could theoretically combine with the centre, but policy gaps on taxation, climate and migration are wide. The far-right bloc's 42 seats are mathematically available but politically toxic for D66, which campaigned explicitly against Wilders' agenda. The most likely outcome is a broad centrist coalition of four or five parties, a configuration the Dutch call a "broad cabinet". Such governments are slow to form, the 2021-2022 formation took a record 299 days, and often fragile once installed. Jetten's promise of a positive, delivery-focused government will be tested by the necessity of compromise.

What happens if the centre fails

The stakes of the next formation are not merely procedural. Steunenberg issued a blunt warning: "If they fail, then I'm not sure what may happen at the next election. Many would be disappointed, and far-right parties may gain again." The logic is circular. Voters punished the PVV for governing incompetence after rewarding it for opposition purity. If the centrist alternative cannot demonstrate competence, on housing, on healthcare, on the energy transition, the door swings open for the same forces that never left the hallway. The far-right vote in the Netherlands has proven resilient across three election cycles. It has adapted, splintered, rebranded and waited. The 42 seats it commands today are not a ceiling. They are a floor.