A center-left party and the far-right party of Geert Wilders were projected on Thursday morning to each win the same number of legislative seats in the Dutch election, according to the official count reported by the Dutch newswire ANP.
The outcome was a major win for the political center and a big defeat for Mr. Wilders, who had forced an election just two years after achieving a dominant result and whose party lost 11 seats.
The center-left Democrats 66, a socially progressive party with a centrist economic policy, initially appeared likely to be the largest party when exit polls reported on Wednesday night. By Thursday morning, with nearly all counting completed, ANP reported a lead of a just over a thousand votes nationwide fluctuating between the centrists, known as D66, and Mr. Wilders’s Party for Freedom.
D66, led by Rob Jetten, gained 17 seats, scoring its biggest victory since its founding in 1966. Both parties were set to win 26 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives.
The biggest party gets the first shot at trying to form a government. With the results so close, it could make it difficult to decide which party that is. Still, the chances of Mr. Wilders’s party returning to government are minute.
Leaders of the other biggest parties, including Mr. Jetten, ruled out governing with Mr. Wilders before Wednesday’s election.
On Wednesday night, Mr. Wilders wrote on social media that “we had hoped for a different result, but kept our backs straight.” But, he added, “we are more combative than ever and still the second and maybe even the biggest party of the Netherlands.”
That combative tone returned on Thursday morning, when he wrote on social media that his party should be the first to try to form a government if it ended up being the biggest.
Mr. Jetten, who ran a campaign of relentless optimism and had performed well in the televised debates, said on Wednesday night that “millions of Dutch people turned a page today.”
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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