Though the exact results are still to come in, Wilders ended up with no more than around 14 percent of the vote. Indeed, if 1 percent had gone the other way Wilders would have ended fourth rather than second.
The big story coming out of this Dutch election, then, is the further and possibly final disintegration of the two parties that have dominated Northern European politics since World War II: The Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.
Thirty years ago the Dutch Labour Party and the Christian democrats still had more than two thirds of the vote between them. This time the Labour Party and the Christian Democrats did not even get one third of the vote taken together.
In their place have come a wide range of parties. There are now two green parties in the Netherlands, one pro-EU and one anti. There are two left-wing parties, the decimated Social Democrats and the now much bigger Socialist Party. There is a single issue party for senior citizens and two parties for strict or even fundamentalist Christians.
This election also saw the breakthrough of a populist party for immigrants, DENK. It is led by two Dutchmen of Turkish descent who use the same kind of conspiracy theories and personal attacks on opponents that served Trump so well.
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