Election winner Mark Rutte and Geert Wilders (from behind) during the first talks inside the parliament in The Hague, Netherlands, 16 March 2017.Daniel Reinhardt/Press Association. All rights reserved.Even if you paid particularly close attention to the polls of Holland's 2017 elections, there was a sense that anything was possible. The morning news reported a high turn-out, long lines of eager voters waiting for the voting booths to open. Volunteers handed out their particular flyers at train stations, hoping to sway the few doubters still out there. Meanwhile, this election received unprecedented media attention from all over the world. All of them wondering the same thing: will the rise of populism infect the Dutch electorate too?
The conventional wisdom was that centre-right candidate Mark Rutte would serve a consecutive third-term. But right behind him stood Geert Wilders, the figurehead of the nationalist Party for Freedom (PVV) and the real star of the election. His position in the polls in the weeks before the event shifted from lagging behind to dangerously close and everyone knew better than to underestimate his appeal.
Then came the recent diplomatic skirmish between Holland and Turkey, and the question was whether this incident would convince enough voters of Wilders' thesis on the existential threat of Islam, or had Rutte's commanding response to the incident sealed his victory? Anxiety among europhiles and far-right excitement was palpable. A Wilders win meant another blow to the suffering European globalisation project. The most powerful nations of the world were waiting to see if the liberal bastion of the Netherlands could fall prey to the kind of nationalism that had seduced England, America and was on its way to enrapture France and Italy.
