Exit poll suggests Dutch election result too close to call centre-left party slightly ahead

By Mike Corder and Molly Quell
    The Hague, Oct 30 (AP) An exit poll published immediately after voting ended Wednesday in the Netherlands' general election suggested the result is too close to call, with the centre-left D66 narrowly ahead of the far-right party of anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders.
    The poll showed that D66 would win 27 seats, a rise of 18 compared to the 2023 election. Wilders' Party for Freedom would lose 12 seats to finish at 25 seats, according to the poll published by national broadcaster NOS.
    Pollster IPSOS says that the exit poll was conducted at 65 polling stations and around 80,000 voters, using a method that in past Dutch elections has produced estimates very close to the final results.
    Wilders' Party for Freedom easily won the last election in 2023, taking 37 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives but has lost support since forming and then bringing down a four-party coalition that was notorious for in-fighting and which did not manage to agree on a tough package of measures to rein in migration to the Netherlands.
    The campaign echoed issues that resonate across Europe, focusing on how to rein in migration and tackle chronic shortages of affordable housing.
    But in a country where coalition governments are the norm, it's unclear if parties will work with Wilders again, even if his Party for Freedom repeats its stunning victory from two years ago.
    Mainstream parties have already ruled that out, arguing that his decision to torpedo the outgoing four-party coalition in June in a dispute over migration underscored that he is an untrustworthy partner.
    “It's up to the voters today,” Wilders said after voting in the cavernous atrium of The Hague City Hall, surrounded by security guards. “It's a close call … four or five different parties. I'm confident.”
    Frans Timmermans, the former European Commission vice president who now leads the center-left bloc made up of the Labor Party and Green Left, took his black labrador to a polling station in his home city of Maastricht in the southern Netherlands.
    “It's going to be so close so let's hope we come out as first, because that is the only guarantee to avoid a right-wing government,” he told reporters. (AP)

RHL
RHL

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)