Dutch voters head to polls after Wilders coalition collapses

Dutch voters went to the polls on Wednesday in a snap election called after Geert Wilders withdrew his Party for Freedom (PVV) from the governing coalition, arguing that its migration policy was insufficiently strict. The move ended two years of a right-leaning government that had been marked by internal friction, public rows and a steady erosion of trust in the political class. Polling stations opened at 7:30 am in a country where nearly 40 percent of the electorate told pollsters they had not yet made up their minds.

A fragmented electorate heads to the polls

The final televised debate on Tuesday evening captured the mood: fierce exchanges, personal attacks and only occasional bursts of substantive argument. Dutch broadcaster NOS described the day before the vote as one where tension had "rarely been so high". Five parties now sit within striking distance of finishing first: Wilders's PVV, the left-green alliance GroenLinks, PvdA, the centrist Democrats 66 (D66), the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and the liberal VVD. In a system built on proportional representation, the identity of the largest party matters less than the arithmetic of coalition-building, but it sets the tone for the formation talks that will follow.

At a polling station in Rijswijk, a suburb of The Hague housed in a glass-and-steel office building, the morning queue was thin but steady. One voter, wearing a bright red windbreaker, declined to reveal his choice but did not hide his frustration. "The last couple of years, the people in government were fighting each other instead of trying to make the country better," he told RFI. "That's the task for those now elected to parliament." He added that Wilders had "already walked out of government twice because he didn't get his way, and that's no way to run a country."

Two years of Wilders and a coalition that collapsed

Wilders entered government in 2023 after the PVV won the most seats in the previous election, a result that shook the Dutch political establishment. His party had long been treated as a pariah by mainstream rivals, but the collapse of the previous centre-right cabinet and a campaign focused on asylum and immigration brought him into the fold. The coalition agreement, negotiated with the VVD, the New Social Contract (NSC) and the Farmer, Citizen Movement (BBB), promised the toughest asylum regime in Dutch history. Yet within months, the partners were at odds over implementation.

The breaking point came when Wilders demanded emergency powers to bypass parliamentary scrutiny on asylum measures, a step his coalition partners refused to countenance. He withdrew the PVV's ministers, leaving a minority cabinet that could not survive a confidence vote. Critics noted the irony: a party that had campaigned on decisive leadership had instead delivered paralysis. The VVD, which had provided the prime minister in Mark Rutte for thirteen years before stepping aside for a PVV-led administration, found itself defending a record it had helped write.

The five-way race and the undecided forty percent

Polling in the final weeks showed the PVV holding a narrow lead but shedding support to the right-wing splinter party JA21 and to non-voters. GroenLinks, PvdA, led by Frans Timmermans until his departure for a European Commission role, consolidated the progressive vote but struggled to break through a ceiling of roughly 25 percent. D66 and CDA, traditional kingmakers, hovered near 10 percent each, while the VVD, still the largest party in the outgoing parliament, fought to retain relevance after its decision to serve under Wilders alienated both its liberal base and its right flank.

The scale of indecision is unusual even by Dutch standards. In 2023, roughly 30 percent of voters decided in the final week; this year the figure is higher. Part of the explanation lies in the volatility of the migration issue itself. The PVV's demand for an "asylum crisis law" that would suspend international obligations resonates with a segment of the electorate, but the legal and practical feasibility of such a measure is contested by constitutional scholars and the Council of State. Other voters, particularly in the cities, cite housing, healthcare and climate policy as priorities that received little airtime in a campaign dominated by border control.

Voters describe a politics of exhaustion

Mark, an IT developer in his thirties, summed up a widely shared sentiment: "It's a bit of a mess, isn't it? What really worries me, and you can see this happening internationally too, is that conservatives are increasingly willing to work with the radical right." He argued that once that threshold is crossed, debates become more personal, the quality of discussion deteriorates, and politicians focus on point-scoring rather than delivery. "The overall standard of politics right now is just dismal," he said.

Sandra, in her late fifties, voted D66 primarily for its environmental platform. "I didn't hear much about it during the debates, so I really hope they'll do something," she said. Ilse, another voter, echoed the desire for a return to the centre: "Nothing has happened. I hope we'll move back towards the centre. Then, perhaps, things might take a different direction. As it stands, nothing changes. They made plenty of plans, but nothing came of them. We also need a bit more respect for each other, that seems to have completely disappeared, in my view."

Counting begins: the timeline from exit polls to official result

Polling stations close at 9:00 pm. Immediately afterwards, NOS will publish the first exit poll conducted by Ipsos I&O across 65 locations with a sample of around 80,000 voters, one of the largest such operations in Europe. At 9:30 pm, the exit poll will be updated as actual counts begin to feed in from municipalities. Results from cities with more than 100,000 residents are expected before midnight, offering an early picture of urban versus rural divides. The Dutch news agency ANP will issue a final projection on Thursday, but the Election Council (Kiesraad) will not confirm the official seat distribution until next week, after all overseas ballots and any recounts are processed.

The mechanics of Dutch vote counting are transparent and fast by international standards, but the political aftermath is not. In 2021, it took 299 days to form a government, a record. In 2023, the process lasted 244 days. The current fragmentation suggests another prolonged negotiation, particularly if the PVV finishes first but cannot find partners willing to govern with it. The VVD has ruled out serving under Wilders again; D66 and GroenLinks, PvdA have excluded cooperation with the PVV on principle; CDA and NSC have kept their options open but face internal pressure to reject any deal that undermines the rule of law.

What the next government will actually need to do

Beyond the migration rhetoric, the Netherlands faces a backlog of decisions that the outgoing cabinet deferred. The nitrogen crisis, which has stalled construction and infrastructure projects for years, requires a legally robust settlement with farmers and nature organisations. Housing shortages persist in the Randstad, where prices have risen faster than wages for a decade. The energy transition demands massive grid investment and a clear policy on gas extraction in Groningen, where the field was officially closed in 2023 but residual production continues. Healthcare waiting lists have grown since the pandemic, and the pension system reform agreed in 2023 still needs implementing legislation.

None of these issues lent themselves to the binary language of the campaign. The PVV's platform treats them as secondary to border control; the left-green alliance prioritises climate and social housing but lacks a parliamentary majority; the centrist parties offer managerial continuity but struggle to articulate a compelling narrative. The result is a policy vacuum that the next coalition agreement, whenever it arrives, will have to fill with concrete choices rather than slogans.

A political culture that rewards disruption over delivery

The Dutch system of proportional representation has historically produced compromise governments that govern from the centre. That model is under strain. The rise of the PVV, the fragmentation of the traditional Christian democratic and social democratic pillars, and the emergence of single-issue parties on both the right and the left have multiplied the number of viable coalition permutations while reducing the ideological coherence of any single combination. Wilders's decision to blow up his own cabinet after two years, the second time he has done so, having withdrawn support from the Rutte III cabinet in 2012, suggests a strategy of permanent campaigning rather than governing.

Voters have noticed. The red-windbreaker voter in Rijswijk was not alone in describing the past two years as a period of fighting rather than fixing. The question now is whether the election produces a parliament capable of forming a government that lasts a full term, or whether the Netherlands enters another cycle of short-lived cabinets and early elections. The answer will not be known on Thursday, or even next week. It will emerge in the rooms where party leaders negotiate, and in the willingness of politicians to accept that governing means conceding ground, something Wilders has so far refused to do.