The preliminary results of the Dutch elections were known already the same evening of Wednesday, September 12, but the final results (including postal votes) took a few days longer.

The good news is that the populist party PVV of islamophobic and anti-Europe Geert Wilders lost dramatically. The leftist and anti-Europe SP also lost.Big winners are the conservative-liberal VVD and the socialist PvdA. Together they have now 79 seats in the House of Representatives (150 seats), a majority.

However, their programs are quite different, so it will not be easy to form a coalition between the two.

Here is a map of the Netherlands with the 2012 election results.

The map shows the biggest party in each town/village, just to give an impression about the local support for a party. We don’t have a district system, but proportional representation, so votes for other parties are not lost.

For comparison, here is the map for the 2010 elections

Quite a big change! The grey color is the Wilders party. The most dramatic change is the almost complete secularisation of the country. The Christian parties have been decimated in this last election. That’s another piece of good news for a secular humanist like me…:-)