Dutch Elections: Final Results

On 97% of the vote reported, these are the results of Wednesday's elections:

[Update Friday 15:50: Total vote now in, 1 seat shifted from the SP to the PvdA, table has been brought to date.]

1. CDA (Christian Democrats) : 41 (-3)
2. PvdA (Social Democrats) : 33 (-9)
3. SP (Socialists) : 25 (+16)
4. VVD (Free-Market Liberal) : 22 (-6)
5. PvdV/Wilders (Hard Right) : 9 (+9)
6. GroenLinks (Green Left) : 7 (-1)
7. ChristenUnie (Christian) : 6 (+3)
8. D66 (Left Liberal) : 3 (-3)
9. PvdD (Animal Activists) : 2 (+2)
10. SGP (Fundie Christian) : 2 (+0)

As the parties will have to form a majority coalition with at least 76 seats, the next stage will be the negotiations. This procedure still takes place through the Queen, who will first give the leader of (or a senior figure of) the majority party a mission to explore a new coalition. At the moment, no obvious coalition holds the majority.

The most likely coalition would be between the CDA and the PvdA, but even they now require a third partner, which could be the ChristenUnie, Groenlinks, or the SP. I think that the SP is still too far removed from the CDA for the parties to be able to form a stable coalition, especially in terms of foreign policy. Additionally, the PvdA, with a rather heavy loss behind them, will not exactly be jumping to govern.

A rather complicated outcome, but it looks like we will get a center-left coalition.