D66's big victory marks the comeback of the political center

After a failed experiment with the radical right-wing PVV in government, voters are finally giving the political center a chance. According to ANP's forecast, D66 will become the largest party in the Netherlands with 27 seats, for the first time in parliamentary history, and the CDA also appears to be returning to the center of power with a gain of fourteen seats. The biggest losers in Wednesday's elections are Geert Wilders' PVV, which is forecast to lose twelve seats, and GroenLinks-PvdA, which will lose five seats and whose party leader Frans Timmermans immediately resigned.

The difference between D66 and the PVV, the second-placed party in the ANP forecast, is small and therefore still uncertain. However, this doesn't seem crucial for coalition formation, as many potential governing parties, including the VVD, have excluded the PVV. This means D66 seems to have the best chance of seizing the initiative in the cabinet formation process, and its lead candidate, Rob Jetten, can look forward to becoming prime minister. However, the formation process could still be challenging, as there are two possible majority options: D66/VVD/GroenLinks-PvdA/CDA (89 seats) and D66/VVD/CDA/JA21 (78 seats).

Research showed that more and more voters appreciated Jetten's 'calm' and 'constructive' attitude

D66's victory, from its current 9 seats to a potential 27, is spectacular and the result of a near-perfect campaign. Until mid-September, D66 had only gained a small amount in the polls and seemed unable to enter the race for prime minister. In recent weeks, Jetten made a real final sprint, with convincing performances in the television debates and an optimistic narrative about the future of the Netherlands. Voter research by Ipsos I&O showed that a growing number of voters came to appreciate Jetten's "calm" and "constructive" attitude.

In terms of content, D66 placed more emphasis on the issues currently important to voters, such as housing, healthcare, and migration, while Jetten didn't shy away from a more critical, right-wing tone. And the party embraced the Dutch flag, which flew proudly behind Jetten again on Wednesday as he addressed the enthusiastic D66 members in Leiden. "Millions of Dutch people have turned the page today and said goodbye to the politics of negativity and hatred," said Jetten, who successfully emerged as the anti-Wilders during the campaign, both in substance and style.

Beating

With this result, voters are severely punishing the four parties that originally formed part of the outgoing Schoof cabinet – the PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB. According to ANP's forecast, they will lose a combined 36 seats. Wilders, while still close to D66 in terms of seats, will lose approximately 12 of his current 37 seats. This means the PVV leader's gamble to dissolve his first cabinet within a year has backfired. The VVD (-1) and BBB are also losing seats (from 7 to 4, according to the forecast), and the NSC is taking the biggest hit: the party that, thanks to Pieter Omtzigt, unexpectedly gained 20 seats in 2023 will disappear from Parliament. The choice to govern with Geert Wilders' PVV thus appears to have been literally fatal for NSC.

For the left, the result is utterly disastrous. The SP and Volt lost seats, but the five-seat loss for GroenLinks-PvdA is particularly striking. The two left-wing parties completed a merger in recent years, promising to win more seats together, but that hope has not materialized. And this despite GroenLinks-PvdA having led the left-wing opposition against the right-wing and unsuccessful Schoof cabinet for the past two years.

Instead of capitalizing on this, GroenLinks-PvdA is now suffering a significant loss; the party appears to have suffered from the success of D66. For party leader Frans Timmermans, this prompted an emotional speech, immediately announcing his inevitable departure "with a heavy heart." As a relatively senior leader of the new left-wing coalition, Timmermans has never been entirely convincing and now says it's time to hand over leadership to a new generation.

The VVD lost only one seat (from 24 to 23) and celebrated that on Wednesday almost as a victory

Besides D66, the CDA, thanks to party leader Henri Bontenbal, is also one of the biggest winners. And although the CDA had hoped for the premiership early in the campaign thanks to strong polls, the gain – from 5 to 19 seats, according to the forecast – is a significant achievement. Especially since the CDA reached a historic low two years ago and there were internal fears of the party's demise. Bontenbal has shown that a traditional centrist party can successfully recover in today's volatile political landscape.

According to the ANP forecast, the VVD will lose only one seat (from 24 to 23) and celebrated this almost as a victory on Wednesday. It's also an unexpectedly good result considering the sometimes disastrous polls of recent months, which saw the party drop to thirteen seats due to the unpopular leadership of Dilan Yesilgöz. But Yesilgöz continued to fight on in the campaign and thus kept the loss very limited, possibly because right-wing voters didn't really see an alternative to the party.

Another winner on the right is Joost Eerdmans' JA21, which rose from one to nine seats according to the Ipsos I&O exit poll earlier this evening. JA21 is clearly one of the parties benefiting from the PVV's loss. The poll showed that the block of radical right-wing parties in the House of Representatives hasn't decreased significantly in size, partly because Forum voor Democratie doubled its seat size to six. The radical right bloc (PVV, JA21, FVD) thus loses only one seat compared to 2023.

To form

The ANP forecast complicates the upcoming cabinet formation in advance because there are two viable majority options. D66 would like to form a cabinet from "the broad political center," meaning the VVD, GroenLinks-PvdA, and the CDA. Jetten immediately called this "a very logical option" on Wednesday evening, but also said that this will depend "on the sentiment among those parties." GroenLinks-PvdA will be devastated by the loss and may have little motivation to govern, although Timmermans' departure could ultimately create room for that.

Another sentiment Jetten likely alluded to is that of Yesilgöz's VVD party, which consistently emphasized throughout the campaign its absolute refusal to govern with the left. Yesilgöz will be strengthened in this position by the forecast and by the fact that the "center-right" option she previously proposed also secured a majority: D66-VVD-CDA-JA21. This option, however, is much less appealing to D66 in terms of content, especially due to the significant differences with JA21.

With two options on the table, and potential disagreements between the parties, the formation process could yet again prove more complicated than initially hoped. Several parties earlier in the campaign expressed their ambition to form a new cabinet before Christmas, given the significant stagnation that has characterized The Hague for years. This will be the first major challenge for D66 leader Jetten: to demonstrate that he can break the political paralysis from a renewed and strengthened core.