Reuters — The Dutch will vote on Wednesday in an election that was seen as a test of anti-immigrant sentiment even before a rift with Turkey at the weekend put immigration and nationalism at the top of the political agenda.
Geert Wilders, who wants to “de-Islamicise” the Netherlands, hopes clashes between Turkish-Dutch protesters and the police, along with Ankara’s accusations of Dutch “fascism”, will help bolster his chances of finishing first.
Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) has virtually no chance of forming a government, given the splintered political landscape. Other parties have ruled out a coalition with a party they view as racist, but a PVV win would nevertheless send shock waves across Europe.
The more immediate question in the Netherlands is whether the Turkey row will favour Wilders or Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose cabinet banned Turkish ministers from holding a rally in the Netherlands.
A snap poll Monday evening showed a boost of three seats for Rutte’s VVD and two for Wilders’s PVV in the 150-seat parliament at the expense of smaller parties to the left, said pollster Maurice de Hond.
The Turkish government wants to lobby Dutch Turks to support plans to hand sweeping new powers to President Tayyip Erdogan in a referendum in Turkey on April 16.
“In times when the nation is hit by something like this, there’s the inclination for people to get behind the government,” said Hans Gosling, a political commentator at the Dutch newspaper Trouw.
The latest Reuters poll of poll puts Rutte’s conservative VVD Party top at 16.2 percent, ahead of Wilders’ PVV on 13.4 percent. The CDA is close behind at 12.5 percent on a rising trend.
Earlier, Rutte called on voters to reject Wilders.
“We’ve seen it with Brexit, we’ve seen it with Trump, when we thought it wouldn’t happen the night before. The chance is still large as life that we wake up on March 16 and Wilders’ (party) is the biggest,” he said.
