By Bart H. Meijer, Toby Sterling and Anthony Deutsch
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -The centrist D66 party was on course to win most votes in the Dutch national election and defeat the far right, an exit poll showed on Wednesday, opening a path for the energetic leader Rob Jetten to become the Netherlands’ youngest and first openly gay prime minister.
The exit poll projected D66 to win 27 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, beating far-right leader Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party with 25. The poll has a margin of error of up to three seats.
Cheers and chants of “Yes, we can” broke out at the D66 election night celebration as the crowd waved Dutch flags.
The popularity of 38-year-old Jetten surged in the past month, as he campaigned on a positive message promising an end to a political era dominated by Wilders.
Wilders’ nationalist, anti-immigration PVV party’s short-lived time in government seems likely to be over for now. Mainstream parties from the left to the right have ruled out joining a coalition with them.
With 76 seats needed to form a governing coalition in the Netherlands’ parliament, one scenario is a pact including D66, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDA), the centre-right VVD, and the Greens-Labour party.
However, building stable coalitions is tough and talks are expected to take months.
The Dutch election was seen as a test of whether the far-right can expand its reach or whether it has peaked in parts of Europe. The outcome may suggest there are limits to its enduring appeal.
Wilders, known for his anti-Islam stance, won a shock victory in 2023 elections and his party entered government for the first time, but he walked out on his own right-wing coalition in June to trigger the new election after partners rejected his 10-point immigration plan.
(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch, Toby Sterling, Bart Meijer. Additional reporting by Suban Abdulla, Marta Fiorin, Charlotte Van Campenhout. Editing by Sharon Singleton, Toby Chopra and Rosalba O’Brien)
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