Didnt social democrats and the other government party together still lose like half of their seats?
I mean, the "anti-populist victory" here is that Wilders' didnt win as much as was feared, ainnit?
Indeed. It's not quite the result I was hoping for, but with the current PM losing a bunch of seats and Wilders gaining five to edge into second place (just beating CDA and D66 according to the last result I saw), it's not terrible either. I'm surprised that Sheb would term the largest opposition party 'in the wilderness', but hey, whatever works for you.
Wilders had much higher support in the past actually, in the previous election he lost a lot of votes, and with his current "victory" he does not even come close to reaching his old levels.
2010: 24 seats
2012: 15 seats
2017: 20 seats
Note that in 2010 Wilders was given actual role in goverment, he was part of a coalition with CDA and VVD in some kind of shady construct where the PVV did not have to carry full responsibilities.
Wilders made a mess of it, and actually chose to make the coalition collapse early leading to the elections of 2012.
He was rightfully punished by the electorate at that time, but alas, people have short memories.
The votes in the current election are divided over a lot of parties, while the PVV might turn out to be the second party in size, he now represents only 13% of the population. That does not translate into the great patriotic spring that we have been hearing so much about.
The main reason the other parties do not want to work with Wilders now is not a "cordonne sanitaire" but the fact that both experiments we had in the Netherlands in working with populists in our goverment have miserably failed due to their incompetence.