Netherlands election: Polls open in neck-and-neck race to decide next Dutch leader

Voting for parliamentary elections in the Netherlands began on Wednesday as pollsters said the race for the next Dutch leader will be a close call.

The elections will determine a new direction for the Netherlands as outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte has been at the helm of affairs in the country for the past 13 years.

Campaigning for the elections ended on Tuesday, with Dutch party leaders clashing in a heated television debate.

Four political parties from the left to far-right political spectrums are competing to secure a leading position in the Dutch parliament.

Over 13 million voters are expected to participate in the elections, casting their ballots between 7.30am and 9pm local time. Dutch News reported that 221 polling stations – many of which are at train stations – will open earlier as will a handful of mobile polling stations for rural areas.

There are about 9,823 polling stations nationwide, according to Dutch non-profit Open State Foundation.

The centre-right government led by Mr Rutte collapsed in July due to disagreements on strategies to curb the influx of asylum seekers. Mr Rutte is the country’s longest-serving prime minister, but has faced a decline in his popularity and promised not to seek re-election.

The last pre-election poll has put three political parties neck-to-neck.

The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) is set to win 28 seats, according to a poll by I&O Research.

Mr Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and a coalition of the GroenLinks (GL) and Labour Party (PvdA), known collectively as GL-PvdA, will get a total 27 seats, according to the poll.

Due to a margin of error, however, the three parties are considered tied at the moment, according to the Dutch Volkskrant newspaper.

Observers believe that the focal points of the Dutch election campaign revolved around three primary issues: immigration, living standards and the climate crisis.

Despite unemployment standing at less than 4 per cent, several social concerns remain.

These include a shortage of housing, failures in the healthcare system and a growing sense of resentment towards the widening gap between the rich and the poor in a traditionally egalitarian Dutch society.

Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, 46, the leader of the centre-right, is considered a frontrunner in the elections and could potentially make history as the first woman Dutch prime minister.

She, however, faces stiff competition from anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders and a left alliance led by former top-ranking EU commissioner Frans Timmermans.

Ms Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, the new leader of Mr Rutte’s party, has declared that unlike the outgoing prime minister, she will not rule out the PVV from coalition negotiations.

Mr Wilders – another top contender for the Dutch leadership role – since then has also adopted a more moderate tone, saying he is available for coalition talks.

“The main challenge... is the perception that the party’s [PVV] campaign is devoid of any substance,” Sarah de Lange, professor of politics at the University of Amsterdam, was quoted as saying by AFP.

“Yeşilgöz-Zegerius emphasises that they will do things differently, without going into detail what the key measures will be.”

Among the other leading candidates are Mr Timmermans, the EU’s former climate chief who is leading a combined ticket for the Labour and Green Left Parties, and Pieter Omtzigt, a former Christian Democrat who launched his own protest party called New Social Contract that focuses on reforming the Dutch political system.

On Tuesday, Politico’s Poll of Polls showed Ms Yeşilgöz-Zegerius leading with 18 per cent, followed closely by Mr Wilders and Mr Timmermans on 16 per cent each and Mr Omtzigt’s party at 15 per cent.

“The two things we can expect are that we will no longer have any ‘big’ parties left – good luck finding a majority – and high volatility, which makes it extremely difficult to make any sort of predictions about the outcome,” Leonie de Jonge, assistant professor in European politics and society at Groningen University, told the Guardian.

Additional reporting by agencies