Two days after the general election, the result remains too close to call, with the liberal party D66 holding a slim lead of just over 15,000 votes over Geert Wilders’ PVV.

The final result now hinges on the last local authority still to report – Venray in Noord-Limburg – and the votes cast by Dutch expats who live abroad.

Venray became the focus of national attention after a small fire broke out in a polling station during the count, delaying the process. The town’s mayor said around 24,000 votes were cast locally, and final checks are expected to be completed later on Friday.

Two years ago, Venray backed the PVV, which took 5,805 more votes than D66. However, the PVV’s support has dropped nearly everywhere, while backing for D66 has risen, even in PVV heartlands.

In Almere, for example, Wilders won 19.2% of the votes, down seven percentage points on 2023, while D66 shot up into second place with 16.7%.

In addition, around 135,000 Dutch nationals abroad requested a postal ballot, and officials expect around 90,000 of those to have been returned. The result from overseas voters is not expected until Monday evening.

At the last election, most expat votes went to GroenLinks-PvdA, with D66 and the PVV trailing behind, but the D66 vote shrank everywhere in 2023 and insiders expect it to be much higher this time.

Parliamentary chairman Martin Bosma has postponed the meeting to appoint a verkenner until Tuesday, saying it would be premature to start the coalition process before all votes are in. The role of the verkenner, or scout, is to sound out all the parties which won seats in the 150-seat parliament about potential coalitions.

In total, 15 parties are set to be represented in parliament.

With 99.7% of the votes counted, both D66 and the PVV have around 1.7 million votes each and are tied on 26 seats.

The leader of the largest party traditionally takes the first step in the actual coalition talks, meaning both Wilders and D66’s Rob Jetten are now positioning themselves to claim that mandate once the count is complete.