Major victory for D66 marks the comeback of the political center

After a failed experiment with the radical right-wing PVV in government, voters are giving the political center another chance. According to the ANP 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 big losers at Wednesday’s polls are Geert Wilders’ PVV, which is forecast to lose twelve seats, and GroenLinks-PvdA, which surrenders five seats and where party leader Frans Timmermans immediately resigned.

The difference between D66 and the PVV, number two in the ANP forecast, is small and therefore still uncertain. But this does not seem crucial for coalition formation, because many potential government parties, including the VVD, have excluded the PVV. This means that the chances for D66 to take the initiative in the cabinet formation appear to be greatest and party leader Rob Jetten can look forward to becoming prime minister. Although the formation may still be difficult enough, because there are numerically two majority variants that could work well: 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

The victory of D66, from the current 9 Chamber seats to a possible 27, is spectacular and the result of an almost perfect campaign. Until mid-September, D66 was only making a small profit in the polls and the party seemed unable to get involved in the battle for the premiership. In recent weeks, Jetten has made a real final sprint, with convincing performances in the TV debates and an optimistic story about the future of the Netherlands. Voter research by Ipsos I&O showed that more and more voters appreciated Jetten’s “calm” and “constructive” attitude.

In terms of content, D66 started to place more emphasis on the themes that are currently important to voters, such as housing, healthcare and migration, where Jetten did not shy away from a more critical, right-wing tone. And the party embraced the Dutch flag, which again flew pontifically behind Jetten on Wednesday when he addressed the delirious D66 members in Leiden. “Millions of Dutch people have turned the page today and said goodbye to the politics of negativism and hatred,” said Jetten, who successfully emerged as the anti-Wilders in the campaign in terms of content and style.

Beating

With this result, the voter is harshly punishing the four parties that were originally part of the outgoing Schoof cabinet – PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB. According to the ANP forecast, they will jointly lose 36 seats. Although Wilders is still close to D66 in terms of seat numbers, he will lose approximately 12 of his current 37 seats. This means that the PVV leader’s gamble to blow up his first cabinet within a year turned out wrong. The VVD (-1) and the BBB also lose seats (according to the forecast from 7 to 4) and for NSC the blow is greatest: the party that, thanks to Pieter Omtzigt, obtained twenty seats out of nowhere in 2023, disappears from the House again. The choice to govern with Geert Wilders’ PVV seems to have literally been fatal to NSC.

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For the left, the outcome is downright disastrous. The SP and Volt lose seats, but the loss of five seats for GroenLinks-PvdA is particularly striking. The two left-wing parties completed a merger process in recent years with the promise that they would be able to gain more seats together, but that hope has not come true. And while GroenLinks-PvdA has been leading the left-wing opposition to the right-wing and not very successful Schoof cabinet for the past two years.

Instead of benefiting from this, GroenLinks-PvdA is now suffering a significant loss, the party seems to have suffered from the success of D66. It was reason for party leader Frans Timmermans to immediately announce his inevitable departure in an emotional speech “with pain in the heart”. As a relatively old leader of the new left-wing combination, Timmermans has never been completely convincing and now says that it is time to transfer leadership to a new generation.

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

In addition to D66, the CDA is also one of the big winners thanks to party leader Henri Bontenbal. And although the CDA had hoped for the premiership due to the good polls early in the campaign, the win – according to the forecast from 5 to 19 seats – is a major achievement. Especially because the CDA scored a historic low in the number of seats two years ago and there were internal fears of the end of the party. Bontenbal has shown that a traditional middle party can successfully recover in today’s volatile political landscape.

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

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Another winner on the right is Joost Eerdmans’ JA21, which rises from one to nine seats according to forecasts. JA21 is clearly one of the parties that benefits from the PVV’s loss. The gain shows that the bloc of radical right parties in the House of Representatives is not decreasing enormously in size, also because Forum for Democracy doubled to six seats. The radical right-wing bloc (PVV, JA21, FVD) will lose only one seat compared to 2023.

Forming

The picture of the ANP forecast complicates the upcoming cabinet formation in advance because there are two workable majority variants. D66 would like to form a cabinet from “the broad political center”, i.e. with 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 may ultimately provide room for this.

Another sentiment that Jetten was probably referring to is that of Yesilgöz’s VVD, who continuously insisted during the campaign that they absolutely did not want to govern with the left. Yesilgöz will be strengthened in that position by the forecast and by the fact that the ‘center-right’ variant she previously suggested also has a majority, namely D66-VVD-CDA-JA21. This variant is much less attractive for D66 in terms of content, especially due to the major differences with JA21.

With two variants on the table, and possible disagreements between the parties, the formation may become more complicated than previously hoped. Earlier in the campaign, several parties expressed the ambition to form a new cabinet before Christmas, given the major standstill that has characterized The Hague for years. It will be the first major task for D66 leader Jetten, to show that he can break through the political paralysis from a renewed and strengthened center.

Update October 30, 2025: after the publication of the ANP forecasts at 01:30, this piece has been updated.

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