The anti-immigration Party for Freedom is topping Dutch opinion polls following the highly-publicized murder of a teenage girl by a foreign national seeking asylum.
The PVV, founded and led by right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders, is leading public opinion surveys, with the next parliamentary election due in October, according to Dutch media.
If the election were held today, PVV candidates would be projected to win 33 seats out of the 150-seat legislature, a significant advantage over the left-wing GroenLinks-PvdA party’s projected 26 seats.
The centrist People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, from which the PVV split in 2004, is suffering a collapse in support among voters, declining from 23 to 15 projected seats in recent polls.
Wilders’ party triggered the election when they left a shaky governing coalition in June over its failure to implement freezes on asylum applications and requests for family reunification. The PVV was the largest party in the coalition, but other parties refused to join together if Wilders headed the government.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof called PVV’s departure an “irresponsible and unnecessary” action that “shouldn’t have happened.”
But Wilders saw the coalition as an unnecessary impediment to the PVV’s agenda, and hopes to ride the party’s climbing popularity into the top office.
“In fact, I am going to become prime minister of the Netherlands next time and ensure that the PVV becomes bigger than ever in the next elections,” he said following the government’s collapse in June.
Anti-immigration sentiment has flared up following the murder of a 17-year-old girl named Lisa in Amsterdam, a national scandal that has fomented anxiety and anger in a country known for its generous immigration policies.
Lisa, who was reportedly cycling home following a night out, was stabbed to death by a 22-year-old asylum-seeker. She was allegedly stabbed multiple times in the neck as she attempted to call the authorities. Emergency responders arrived too late, and she was found dead.
Authorities have not identified either the victim or the suspect, in accordance with Dutch laws, but police say he was a resident of the city’s Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers facility.
Police say that the same asylum-seeker is believed to have attacked and sexually assaulted a separate woman in Amsterdam just five days prior.
The shocking murder has become a flashpoint for Dutch citizens who fear that the levels of immigration, both legal and illegal, have collapsed social cohesion and public safety.
Approximately 33,760 asylum applications were filed in the Netherlands last year, including 32,175 first-time applications. This was a slight decrease from the 38,377 applications in 2023. The majority of asylum-seekers come from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.
Wilders has lamented the nation’s immigration policy, accusing the parliament of turning the Netherlands into “one huge asylum facility.”
The right-wing leader was brought to court on charges of inciting discrimination at a rally in 2014, where he led a chant calling for fewer Moroccans to come into the country. He was convicted in 2016 but challenged the decision.
An appeals court eventually overturned the ruling in 2020, which found he had “already paid a high price for years for expressing his opinion.”
He faced similar charges as far back as 2011, when he was brought to court for comparing Islam to Nazism and demanding the Quran be banned from the Netherlands, a case in which he was acquitted.
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Other conservative parties, including the Christian Democratic Appeal, led by 42-year-old Henri Bontenbal, have adopted anti-migration policies ahead of the October election.
Wilders established the PVV so that he is the only registered member, allowing successful candidates to represent the party as lawmakers while Wilders wields sole power over the PVV platform.
The Dutch parliament has historically always required coalition-building between parties due to the lack of an absolute majority from any one political tribe.
