The result of the Dutch general election remained too close to call on Thursday afternoon, with the far-right PVV and the liberal D66 tied on 26 seats as the last results trickled in.

Slow counting in some areas and a small electrical fire at Venray town hall have delayed the publication of the final results from the Netherlands, while the votes of Dutch expats abroad still need to be included.

With 99.7% of the votes counted, both parties have won around 1.7 million votes and are separated by just a few thousand — a figure that has shifted back and forth between the two as the final towns declare their results.

Early on Thursday afternoon, however, D66 took a 15,000-vote lead over the PVV following the publication of the final results from Amsterdam.

Although the end result is unlikely to affect the number of MPs each party will have, the leader of the biggest party traditionally starts the coalition process. Both PVV leader Geert Wilders and D66’s Rob Jetten have said they believe that should happen now.

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Parliamentary chairman Martin Bosma, a PVV MP, said on Thursday he will not start the coalition process until the final result is confirmed. That figure, including an estimated 90,000 expat votes, will not be known until Monday evening.

At the last election in 2023, most expat votes went to GroenLinks-PvdA, with D66 winning 10.5% and the PVV 6.3%. But that year, D66’s support collapsed nationwide, and insiders expect a much stronger performance this time, in line with the party’s resurgence in the Netherlands itself.

The votes from one Caribbean island – Sint Eustatius – went to the NSC, which will have no seats in the lower house of parliament. The other two islands, which are technically Dutch local authorities, both had D66 as the biggest party.

All the party leaders – including a new parliamentary chief for the GroenLinks-PvdA alliance following Frans Timmermans’ resignation, will meet Bosma on Tuesday.