It is a head-to-head contest until the last ballot and, since the Dutch elections, a definitive confirmation on the outcome of the vote has not yet arrived. Even if Rob Jetten’s centrist-liberal D66 party prevails over the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) led by Geert Wilders by a few tens of thousands of votes, it is still early to determine who will be the country’s new leader. While awaiting the definitive result of the elections in the Netherlands – while the liberals of D66 are in the lead and surpass the populists of the PVV by 15 thousand votes – it has been announced that the start of the process of forming the new coalition that should come into government will be postponed until next week. According to Dutch media, the meeting, scheduled for tomorrow, has been postponed to Tuesday 4 November.
The coalition of the new Dutch government
With 99.7 percent of the votes counted, both Rob Jetten’s D66 and Wilders’ Freedom Party will win 26 seats out of the 150 present in Parliament. With the difference that the D66 has almost tripled its seats and Wilders has lost support. The leader who wins the election has priority in forming a coalition, “a complex and exciting process”, as described on the Parliament’s website. First, political parties appoint a “scout” who gathers information to determine which parties are willing to form an alliance. Subsequently, Parliament appoints an “informant” to evaluate the possible guidelines of a coalition agreement. Until 2012, this figure was appointed by the King. The last government of outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof took 223 days to form. However, all parties said they wanted to conclude the process as quickly as possible this time.
The leaders of the main traditional parties have already said which side they want to be on, ruling out wanting to govern with Wilders after the PVV leader pulled the plug on his own governing coalition in June. This favors Jetten to form a government as the youngest Dutch prime minister ever. After the polls closed in yesterday’s general elections in the Netherlands, the exit polls show a head-to-head with the Freedom Party of the well-known anti-immigration populist Geert Wilders, with 26 parliamentary seats each. The latter had gained 37 (out of 150) in the 2023 elections, but left the polls diminished after leading a daring coalition for less than a year. In contrast, the party that Jetten has led since he was 31 has almost tripled the nine seats it had before the last election.
Wilders, by contrast, said the result was not what he wanted, having lost at least 10 seats from his 2023 record (37), but still said he had achieved his second best result ever. Not far behind are three other parties, including the conservative liberals with 22 seats, followed by the left-wing GreenLeft-Labour party and the Christian Democrats. On ‘X’ Wilders admitted that he was unlikely to form a government on his own, but added that if his party were to win the election it should take precedence. “The voter has spoken. We hoped for a different outcome, but we stood our ground,” he wrote on social media.
The decisive blow comes from the leader Dilan Yesilgoz of the VVD, a moderate right-wing party. Yesilgoz reiterated that he will never enter a government with the progressive liberals of Rob Jetten’s D66 nor with Frans Timmermans’ Labour-Green alliance. But it leaves no window open for collaboration with Wilders, after the latter brought down the government last June.
Who is Rob Jatten, the rising star of the Liberals and new prime minister
Considered the rising star of the Liberals and one of the youngest ministers in the country’s history under former Prime Minister Mark Rutte, he said he was “very confident” that he would be able to form a government based on his party’s good performance in the parliamentary elections. If D66 reaches the summit, Jetten could become the first openly gay prime minister of the Netherlands. The 38-year-old has managed to drag his liberal D66 party from fifth place to the top of Dutch politics in less than two years and is now preparing for a possible leadership of the country.
