Dutch voters head to polls in knife-edge election focused on housing and Wilders

Polls open across the Netherlands in a close-run snap election called after hard-right lawmaker Geert Wilders brought down the last four-party coalition in a dispute over a crackdown on immigration.

The campaign focused on migration, a housing crisis and whether parties will work with Wilders in a new coalition if his Party for Freedom repeats its stunning victory from two years ago.

The vote comes against a backdrop of deep polarization in this nation of 18 million and violence at a recent anti-immigration rally in The Hague and at protests across the country against new asylum-seeker centers.

Polls suggest that Wilders’s party, which is calling for a total halt to asylum-seekers entering the Netherlands, remains on track to win the largest number of seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, but other more moderate parties are closing the gap and pollsters caution that many people wait until the very last minute to decide who to vote for.

“It hasn’t been this tense for a long time,” Wilders said late Tuesday on Dutch news show Nieuwsuur after leaders held a final debate.

Polls close at 9 p.m. and broadcasters publish an initial exit poll immediately followed by an update a half hour later.