European election upset for Geert Wilders as Dutch turn cold on anti-EU party

European election upset for Geert Wilders as Dutch turn cold on anti-EU party

Dutch exit polls confound predictions to leave far-Right and anti-Islam leader with 12.2 per cent of vote, behind all pro-EU mainstream political parties

By Bruno Waterfield, Scheveningen10:00PM BST 22 May 2014 / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/10850610/European-election-upset-for-Geert-Wilders-as-Dutch-turn-cold-on-anti-EU-party.html

Geert Wilders came fourth in European elections in the Netherlands on Thursday night, confounding predictions that he would lead a populist and far-Right backlash against the European Union across the continent.

Dutch exit polls put the far-Right and anti-Islam leader on 12.2 per cent of the vote, putting him behind all the pro-EU mainstream political parties.

'Definitive' exit polls put him behind the ruling centrist VVD on 12.3 per cent and almost three per cent behind the pro-EU D66 liberals and Christian Democrats, each on over 15 per cent.

Previous opinion polls had put Mr Wilders in the lead but there was widespread controversy over his alliance with the France’s Front National and the exit polls suggested that his share of the vote fell, compared with 2009, by 4.8 percentage points.

The result is a major blow to Mr Wilders who will lose two seats in the European Parliament with his MEPs now reduced to three out a total of 26 Dutch representatives.

After delaying a downbeat post-election party in a tiny sports bar in the suburbs of Scheveningen, a Dutch seaside town on the outskirts of The Hague, Mr Wilders insisted he would fight on “for national sovereignty, for less immigration, for less Brussels”.

"Our people stayed at home. We'll carry on fighting. We'll find partners who share our views against the EU across Europe," he said.

His supporters, wearing customised “Wilders Akbar” football shirts - a provocative play on the Islam chant “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is Great” - had arrived in celebratory mood but hissed as the first exit polls were released by Dutch state broadcaster.

Around 400 million people across the EU’s 28 member states are eligible to vote in the elections that began in Britain and the Netherlands on Thursday and will conclude when most countries vote on Sunday.

The preliminary exit polls were released when voting closed in the Netherlands at 9pm local time.

Unlike Britain, which keeps all exit polls under wraps until Sunday night, the Netherlands has constitutional requirements that mean polling surveys are published immediately.

Turnout was expected to be lower than the 37 per cent who voted during the last European elections five years ago, amid fears that participation across Europe is heading for an all-time low.

After the elections Mr Wilders will join forces with Marine Le Pen’s Front National to create a European Freedom Alliance with other far-Right parties in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Slovakia and Sweden.

Mr Wilders, who has tried to distance himself from traditional far-Right groups, was forced to distance himself from comments by Jean-Marie Le Pen earlier this week that the Ebola virus could solve Europe’s immigration “problem” by killing Africans. “I don’t agree with it. I think it was a ridiculous remark,” he said.

The European Parliament has a total of 751 seats to be distributed across Europe on the basis of population size during elections that finish on May 25.

As the EU has grown and as its parliament has become increasingly important, popular participation in European elections has slumped.

In 1979, the first direct European election to the parliament, a respectable 62 per cent of eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots. But in 2009 and as MEPs became more important than ever after the Lisbon Treaty, the turnout slumped to 43 per cent.