Why didn’t Geert Wilders do as well as Marine Le Pen?

‘We are really by far the biggest winner this evening,’ said Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), when the European election exit polls were published last week.

But although the Netherlands was first to go to the polls – with strong indications that the far right would be victorious – his ‘win’ fell short of the storming result of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which has sparked a political earthquake in France.

Wilders, an anti-Islam, anti-immigration politician, surprised everyone in the country, including himself, when his PVV became the largest political party in the Netherlands in November. A man who has lived with 24/7 security for two decades is currently putting together a four-party, right-wing coalition government with an experimental ‘business’ structure and former spy chief Dick Schoof as the next prime minister.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his criminal record for his comments about Dutch Moroccans, Wilders has been dominating the polls for months. His party still managed to gain five seats out of 31 in the European parliament, a record result for the PVV.