The Netherlands goes to the polls to elect 150 MPs for the lower house of parliament this week. Here’s a round up of news from the final day of campaigning.

No joke
In Rotterdam, a polling station worker who joked on social media that she would be tearing up all the votes for Geert Wilders and Thierry Baudet has been sacked.

‘This is not how you want to show your face as a local authority,’ city council spokesman Paul Tissingh said. ‘Polling station officials should be neutral.’ It is also impossible to tear up ballot papers because of the checks and balances, he said.

Left-leaning coalition
The most important question this election is whether the current coalition continues in office or not, GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver has told NOS Radio 1. Klaver had attempted to form a pre-election pact with D66 and the PvdA to act as a counterweight to the current centre-right alliance but both parties rejected his overtures.

‘My concerns are not so much about who will be prime minister but about whether the current coalition will continue. Because I can see that they are pretty happy with each other,’ he said.

Televised debates
Voting may have been underway for two days in the general election, but the final televised debates of the campaign take place on Tuesday evening, on public broadcaster NPO1.

The seven small parties currently represented in parliament will be profiled in a 50 minute programme from 7pm, along with Joost Eerdmans of FvD spin-off JA21. He was invited on the basis of the poll of polls of February 24, which indicated the party may win seats. Since then the polls show Volt, BIJ1 and Code Oranje are also in with a chance and they will be profiled in short reports.

At 8.30pm, the main debate, featuring the leaders of the eight biggest parties in parliament will take place. Aside from a general debate, party leaders will be pitted against each other in head-to-head debates on specific topics.

Airtime
Politicians representing the ruling coalition have had much more radio and television airtime than opposition parties and male politicians have had more than twice as much exposure as women, according to an analysis of 45 public radio and television programmes up to March 12.

The survey, carried out by researchers at the University of Utrecht, shows the coalition parties had over 19 hours speaking time in the NPO programmes, left-wing opposition parties 12 hours and ‘populist’ right-wing opposition two hours.

This article will be updated throughout the day

For full coverage of the general election, check out the special website section.