by Clifford F. Thies

An exit poll indicates that the market-liberal Peoples Party and the center-left Labor party will finish in a tie for first, with Geert Wilder's Freedom Party, a populist-right party, coming in third and the center-right Christian Democrats fourth. Together, the three main center-right parties would have exactly 75 of the 150 seats in the parliament.

Peoples Party - 31 seats
Freedom Party - 23 seats
Christian Democrats - 21 seats
TOTAL: 75 seats

The Freedom Party is therefore in a very strong positon for negotiations pursuant to forming a new government.

From the UK Telegraph:

Results from Dutch exit polls show that Mr Wilders and his hard-right Freedom Party, PVV, could become the kingmakers in a new coalition, which is likely to take months to emerge.

The BBC says that the two parties have much in common:

Mark Rutte, the Liberal party leader, is set to be the first Dutch prime minister from his political camp since World War One.

He told Dutch TV how pleased he was, and said he would discuss the details of his policies later. He has pledged to slash the deficit, mainly by cutting welfare programmes and stimulating new jobs, reducing income tax and cutting benefits for immigrants.

Assuming these numbers stand up - and the actual vote count may add or subtract a few seats to the indicated totals - the Peoples Party might want to bring the small Christian Union Party into a ruling coalition. The Christian Union is simultaneously more to the left on spending issues and more to the right on social issues than the Peoples Party.

The real importance of bringing the Christain Union Party into the ruling coalition would be to insure that legislation passed in the Dutch House of Representatives would be OK'ed in the Dutch Senate, where the Freedom has zero representation, but where the Christian Democrats, Peoples Party and Christian Union together have a majority. The Senate, elected to fixed terms by the state councils of the country, cannot pass or even amend legislation, but it can veto legislation passed by the House of Representatives.

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!

With 91 percent of the vote counted, it appears that the center-right parties did slightly better than was indicated by the exit polls. The market-liberal Peoples' Party appears to have finished with 31 seats, in first place, with Labor finishing with 30 seats (one less than indicated by the exit polls). The populist-right Freedom Party appears to have finished third with 24 seats (one more than indicated by the exit polls); and, the Christian Democrats appear to have finished fourth with 21 seats. Were these numbers to hold up, the three main center-right parties would have 76 seats, i.e., a majority of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament.