D66 Won. The Far-Right Didn't Lose.
On the night Rob Jetten declared victory over the Dutch far-right, the far-right quietly gained another seat in parliament.
At an election-night watch party on October 30, 2025, Democrats 66 (D66) leader Jetten told a jubilant crowd, “We've shown not only to the Netherlands, but also to the world that it is possible to beat populist and extreme-right movements.” Yet, instead of decreasing, support for the far-right splintered across other parties. The overall far-right vote held firm, with the far-right bloc in parliament winning 42 seats, one up from 41 in 2023. Jetten’s victory is real, but winning an election against the far-right and reversing the conditions that produced it are two very different achievements that centrists across Europe would do well not to confuse.
In the October 2025 elections, Dutch voters narrowly ousted the party of far-right leader Geert Wilders. The socially progressive, center-left party D66 gained 17 seats, defeating Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) in the popular vote by a margin of less than half a percentage point. On February 23, 2026, after nearly four months of coalition building, Jetten was formally sworn in as Prime Minister, becoming the country's youngest-ever and first openly gay leader.
Jetten’s leadership reverses the country’s political course following the 2023 elections, when Wilders’ PVV, which advocates banning the Quran and closing Islamic schools, won the most seats by far in the country’s House of Representatives in a stunning rebuke of the political establishment. In contrast to what Jetten described as the “negativism” of Wilders, D66 ran a campaign of optimism. Jetten employed an effective and positive social media strategy designed to lay out D66’s policy platform, made notable television appearances, and ran on the slogan “It can be done,” drawing comparisons to the positivity of former United States President Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign. Jetten now faces the challenge of governing and delivering on the stability that his message has promised.
After two years of political instability under the far-right, Dutch voters narrowly returned to centrist leadership, albeit without delivering the kind of decisive mandate that ensures easy governance. Leading a minority government composed of a governing coalition with the centrist Christian Democratic Appeal party and the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, Jetten presented a coalition agreement that promises to increase spending on defense and housing, revive voluntary farm buyouts, and increase the pension age, while maintaining a tight fiscal policy. The agreement is also poised to continue the hardline migration policies instituted by the previous PVV government. Neither the left nor the far-right publicly appear inclined to support the agreement, which will hinder Jetten’s ability to advance any of these proposals, with his coalition ten short of a majority in the lower house of Dutch parliament and 16 short in the upper house.
Jetten’s victory comes at a time when centrist parties across Europe are faltering as support for far-right parties surges. In the Czech Republic, right-wing populist Andrej Babiš comfortably won parliamentary elections in October 2025, handily defeating the center-right governing coalition. In Portugal, the anti-immigration Chega Party in May 2025 became the country’s main opposition party after securing the second most seats in parliament.
As recently as summer 2025, right-wing populist parties in Europe’s four largest economies—Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy—were leading in opinion polls. In Germany, Alice Weidel’s nativist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has moved from the political periphery to posing a growing challenge to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government, consistently polling competitively nationwide and leading in several eastern states. In France, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has grown into the largest party in Parliament’s lower house as the 2027 presidential election looms. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s anti-migrant Reform UK has become the country's highest polling party, with nearly 30 percent support. At the same time, Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s net favorability rating hit a record low of -57 in January. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the country’s most right-wing government since World War II, has consolidated support since her 2022 electoral victory and enjoys a more stable approval rating than her centrist peers across Western Europe.
Together, these developments underscore that across the continent, far-right parties are no longer operating on the fringe. Far-right movements have become mainstream, institutionalized political forces capable not only of winning protest votes but of shaping national agendas.
Amid this trend, the results from the Netherlands have drawn the attention of other European centrists hoping to reproduce Jetten’s success. In a phone interview with the New York Times after his electoral victory, Jetten acknowledged the challenge centrists face, saying, “Yes, you can defeat the populists. But if you want to do that for more than one election, you’re going to have to work very hard.” Electoral victories against the far-right are necessary, but they don't explain where that 42nd seat came from, or why it's likely to persist.
Where have centrist parties gone wrong? While each country has its unique domestic challenges, voters have broadly gravitated toward parties promising sharper positions on immigration, national identity, and economic protection. Rather than reframing the debate, many centrist governments have attempted to neutralize populist challengers by adopting elements of their rhetoric. In the UK, Prime Minister Starmer has announced plans to restrict immigration, apologizing for the “incalculable damage” it has caused the country. In Germany, Chancellor Merz has taken steps to increase deportations and spoken of migrants as dangers to women.
The centrist parties’ attempts at emulating the anti-migrant vitriol from the far-right have largely failed. Teresa Völker, a political scientist at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, argues that when mainstream parties mimic far-right rhetoric, they “increase the visibility of issues owned by the far right” and legitimize those demands by bringing them into the mainstream debate. Instead of reclaiming voters, centrist parties risk amplifying the very narratives that fuel their challengers.
Despite the limitations of applying Jetten’s success in the Netherlands to other European nations, centrists can still draw valuable lessons from the Dutch result. For one, instead of relying on repurposing and imitating far-right rhetoric, the D66 campaign doubled down on positivity, focusing on what voters wanted to see changed. Leiden University professor Bernard Steunenberg endorsed this approach, as opposed to framing things “in very simplistic terms in which blame is being shifted towards different groups in society.” This is a strategy worth mirroring.
Whether Jetten represents a durable revival of European centrism or a temporary pause in the far-right’s ascent remains uncertain. If Jetten’s government aims to mark more than a fleeting course correction, it will have to do more than defeat populism electorally. Instead, Jetten’s government must be prepared to address the economic anxieties, migration pressures, and questions of national identity that have fueled its rise.
Across the continent, populist parties remain deeply embedded in national politics, shaping agendas and broader European governance even when out of power. The danger for European centrists is relying too heavily on the encouraging result to oversimplify what actually happened in the Netherlands. After all, although D66 won, the far-right did not actually shrink.