Image: Binnenhof, seat of the Dutch parliament, The Hague, Netherlands. photo: Zairon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Den_Haag_Binnenhof_02.jpg

On October 29, the Netherlands held a snap election for its House of Representatives after the fall of its coalition government in June. Although the centre-left social liberal D66 and the centre-right Christian Democratic CDA had the largest increase in seats, the far right was not defeated – despite much international media coverage in the immediate aftermath suggesting it was. Moreover, forming a stable coalition government will be highly challenging in the coming months.

The fall of a shaky coalition

The snap election was called in June when the previous coalition government lost its support from the radical right Party for Freedom (PVV). The cabinet was a right-wing coalition formed by four parties after the November 2023 parliamentary election. After a campaign dominated by the issue of immigration, the PVV had come out as the largest party with 37 out of 150 seats, its best election result in history. The PVV is a classic European populist radical right party, mostly characterized by its nativist anti-immigration and anti-Islamic viewpoints that reject core aspects of liberal democracy. It was established in 2006 by Geert Wilders, who has been the leader – and the only party member – ever since.

Because of its radicalism, the party had been sidelined by most other parties in the prior decade. But its election win pushed the party to take the initiative in building a new coalition government. To establish a majority in parliament, it started coalition negotiations with the conservative-liberal VVD, the social conservative NSC and the agrarian-populist BBB. The negotiations proved very difficult, mainly because the PVV’s reputation and its illiberal agenda. The parties even explicitly agreed to remain within the Dutch constitutional framework before real policy negotiations started. A new government was eventually formed in July 2024, seven months after the election. Because Geert Wilders is such a controversial figure, the cabinet was led by Dick Schoof, a nonpartisan top civil servant.

From the outset, the coalition was marked by internal turmoil, mutual distrust and near-collapse. Wilders repeatedly attacked his own government. He also became increasingly dissatisfied over time because his radical migration policies turned out to be irreconcilable with the rule of law. In May 2025, he demanded that the other coalition parties agree to a radical 10-point migration plan including a closure of the border for all asylum seekers, enforced by the army. After a coalition meeting several days later, he concluded that the cabinet was unable to deliver for him and withdrew his party’s support, leading to the fall of the Schoof coalition.

Mostly because of bureaucratic issues, the new snap election could not be held until October 29, almost five months after the fall of the coalition. Despite Wilders pulling the plug on the coalition government, his party surged in the polls in the months leading to the election. He attempted to shift responsibility for the failed government to the other coalition parties during the campaign, accusing them of obstructing his agenda. He was assisted by the fact that the issue of immigration kept dominating Dutch politics and media.

Other parties only partially succeeded in shifting attention to other campaign issues, such as an acute housing crisis and the cost of living. In addition, although most parties planned to stick to an increased contribution to the defence budget in line with the new NATO pledge, they clashed over how to finance this – for example whether to cut spending on social welfare and health care. The Netherlands has also been grappling since 2019 with a court ruling that forces the country to reduce its nitrogen emissions, requiring difficult choices such as cutting back the agricultural sector – decisions that previous cabinets have postponed.

In addition to shifting away attention from the core theme of the PVV, other parties also emphasized that the party had not delivered on any policy issue, leaving the country in political deadlock for almost two years. The main opposition parties, the left GreenLeft-Labour (GL-PvdA), the social-liberal D66 (centre-left), and the Christian Democratic CDA (centre-right) also attacked the other coalition parties, accusing them of irresponsible behaviour by forming a coalition government with the PVV. In particular, D66 leader Rob Jetten and CDA leader Henri Bontenbal ran campaigns on the issue of stable governance consisting of parties respecting the rule of law and democracy.

A fragmented election result

As is often the case in Dutch election campaigns, the polls started to shift in the last weeks. The Netherlands is characterized by high electoral volatility, while also having a large number of voters who remain undecided until the very last moment. In the final results, D66 and PVV tied for the largest number of seats at 26 (with D66 getting some 30,000 more votes). Whereas this marked a gain of 17 seats for D66, it meant a loss for the PVV of 11 seats compared to 2023. The two parties were closely followed by the VVD (22 seats, -2), GL-PvdA (20 seats, -5) and the CDA (18 seats, +13). Turnout, at 78.3 per cent, was comparable with recent elections.

TABLE 1: ELECTION RESULTS FOR MAIN DUTCH PARTIES

Voters clearly penalized the outgoing governing parties. In total, these parties lost 36 of their 88 seats. Besides the PVV and the VVD, the other two incumbent governing parties also took a blow. BBB lost three of its seven seats. while NSC lost all of its 20 seats. The NSC was founded shortly before the 2023 election, completely built around a prominent former CDA member of parliament, Pieter Omtzigt. Once he resigned from the party’s leadership and parliament for personal reasons, the party plummeted in the polls.

In total, 27 parties were on the ballot, and 15 of them won at least one seat. One of the key aspects of the Dutch electoral system is that it ranks among the most proportional ones in the world, with a single nationwide constituency and no electoral threshold. To enter parliament, a party only needs 0.67 per cent of the vote (roughly 70,000 in 2025) – all votes divided by the 150 parliamentary seats.

Roughly speaking, however, Dutch political parties can be divided into three ideological blocs: the left, the centre-right and the far right. The left bloc is anchored by GL-PvdA and D66, the centre right by the CDA and the VVD, and the far right by the PVV. In all three blocs, the main parties are complemented by a range of smaller parties. Dutch electoral volatility mainly takes place between parties in the same ideological bloc. D66 and VVD occupy a unique position here: D66 is able to attract voters from both the left and the centre-right bloc, while the VVD attracts voters from both the centre-right and the far right – not least because it has significantly moved to the right in recent years.

As such, D66’s election win came mainly at the expense of GL-PvdA, NSC and the VVD. The VVD, however, was able to contain its losses by attracting many PVV voters. Most of the CDA’s gains were a result of the collapse of the NSC, which was beneficial to many parties. Besides the larger parties, there were two other noticeable voter shifts, both in the far-right bloc. Both the radical right JA21 (9 seats, +8) and the extreme right Forum for Democracy (FVD, 7 seats, +4) benefited from the loss of votes for the PVV.

The voter shifts within the far-right bloc also show why the PVV’s election loss cannot be seen as a blow to the far right: rather than shrinking, the far-right bloc fragmented. On top of the seats gained by JA21 and FVD, the outgoing incumbent BBB moved from a borderline radical right position in the 2023 election to a clear radical right one in the 2025 campaign. Although the party lost seats, it thus added to the total share of seats for the far-right bloc, which now totals 46.

The left bloc received 56 seats, up from 47 in 2023. However, this masks the fact that the more traditional left-wing parties, without D66, are at a historic low. GL-PvdA in particular saw its result as a clear election loss; its leader Frans Timmermans, former European Commissioner and aspiring next prime minister, stepped down on election night. The centre-right bloc won 48 seats, down from 55 in 2023, with parties in this bloc predominantly losing votes to D66.

The aftermath: Coalition negotiations begin

Although it has always been the case that many parties win at least one seat in Dutch elections, what has changed in recent elections is that the largest parties entering parliament have steadily decreased in size. This has complicated forming stable coalitions, as more – and ideologically more diverse – parties are needed to form parliamentary majorities. The last three coalition governments all took more than 200 days to be formed. In fact, no other party in Dutch parliamentary history has become the largest party in parliament with as few seats as D66 obtained in this election – 26 seats and only 16.9 per cent of the vote.

Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of the election, many media focused on whether D66 or the PVV (both projected to receive 26 seats) received the largest number of votes. While this is understandable from an Anglo-Saxon majoritarian-system perspective, it misses an important point: there is no rule in Dutch politics that the largest party must be part of the government coalition. Any combination of parties reaching the majority of 76 seats is equally legitimate. As all larger parties had already excluded any government coalition with Wilders’s PVV during the campaign, it was irrelevant whether the PVV would receive more votes than D66. Mathematically, the importance of the largest party in forming a majority has declined.

The next step is the formation of a majority coalition. In the immediate aftermath of the election, two coalition combinations were on the table as the most concrete options. D66, CDA and the VVD would be in either one, but there were two possibilities for the fourth party. The first option is GL-PvdA, which would lead to a coalition of parties ranging from the left to the right, with a stable majority of 86 seats. This is the preference of D66, which has most ideological overlap with GL-PvdA.

However, VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz said repeatedly during the election campaign that she refuses to form a new coalition with GL-PvdA, as she believes the ideological distance between the two parties is too large. Instead of GL-PvdA, she prefers a coalition with the radical right JA21. This combination would, however, only have 75 seats, and thus lack a majority. In addition, JA21 and D66 disagree on just about every policy issue likely to play a role in Dutch politics in the coming years.

To avoid deadlock right at the beginning of the coalition formation, D66 and CDA have now taken the initiative of writing a draft coalition agreement, which should be finished by the beginning of December. The parties then want to assess which other parties can see enough common ground in the document to further negotiate a stable coalition government, with a minority government as a potential option. Either way, the formation process is expected to be lengthy and complex. Although the 2025 Dutch election has restored some space to the centrist parties, the third national election in less than five years has yet to bring political stability.