23/05/2014
In September 2012, Gert Wilders was being much-hyped, expected to take the Dutch general election by storm. In
the event, though, he
seriously underperformed, despite (or possibly because of) having pushed the boat out on the back of his eurosceptic credentials.
Yet,
confident predictions that Wilders was again on the march, as part of a Europe-wide upsurge in right-wing parties, have proved
misplaced.
According to Dutch exit polls, his Freedom (PVV) Party has slumped into a "surprise" fourth place in euro-elections. This is despite opinion polls indicating that he would take the most number of seats in the contest, and his earlier commissioning of a
Nexit report. The final exit poll is showing only 12.2 percent of the vote.
On the basis of that poll, the Freedom Party will take a mere three out of the 26 Dutch seats in the parliament, down from four in the 2009 elections, when it took second place.
That the European situation was being over-hyped was rather
what we suspected, with later indications that Dutch support for the EU was
rock solid.
It remains to be see whether the results for the rest of Europe â or even the UK - are likely to be any more accurate. So far, we've only seen one turnout figure for the euros - Wigan delivered 28.6 percent.
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