Geert Wilders is almost certain to be shut out of the next Dutch government after a knife-edge general election in which support for his far-right Freedom party (PVV) slumped and the liberal-progressive D66 party made spectacular gains.

With 99.7% of ballots counted, the two parties were neck and neck on a projected 26 seats each in the 150-seat parliament, with D66 an estimated 15,000 votes ahead after the capital, Amsterdam, declared preliminary results on Thursday.

“It’s incredibly tense,” D66’s 38-year-old leader, Rob Jetten, who is in pole position to become prime minister, told reporters. “We have to wait for the next few hours – or more like days – for the final results.” But, he added, he was “very confident” of being able to form a new coalition government.

The nail-biting finish has already led to a delay in the start of coalition talks, with a meeting of party leaders to appoint a “scout” – the official traditionally appointed by the largest party to sound out possible coalitions – postponed until Tuesday.

An estimated 90,000 votes from Dutch nationals living abroad, who traditionally favour D66 over the PVV, may not be fully counted until late on Monday. But even if Wilders’s PVV party does edge ahead, he appears to have no viable route to a majority.

Dutch elections

All major mainstream parties have ruled out governing with the anti-Islam firebrand, whose PVV won 37 seats in 2023 then led a chaotic rightwing coalition that lasted less than a year before he torpedoed it in a row over his draconian immigration plans.

Wilders nonetheless insisted on Thursday that he should take the lead in forming a new government if the PVV ultimately emerged with the most votes, saying parties should be “crystal clear” about which was the largest in parliament.

“As long as there’s no 100% clarity on this, no D66 scout can get started,” he posted on social media. We will do everything we can to prevent this.” Jetten also said the largest party should “have the initiative”.

Whichever party finishes first, Wednesday’s election was a momentous win for D66, a 60-year-old pro-European party with liberal economic views but a progressive stance on most social issues, whose biggest previous seat tally was 24 and which had just nine seats in the outgoing parliament.

Geert Wilders faces defeat in the parliamentary elections despite his party matching the number of seats of Rob Jetten’s centrist party. Photograph: Sem van der Wal/ANP/AFP/Getty Images

Sarah de Lange, of the University of Leiden, said D66 had been boosted by a “positive, hopeful, can-do campaign, which all our research shows voters prefer to negativity”, and by voters wanting to “signal their wish for a stable, centrist coalition”.

Leonie de Jonge, of the University of Tübingen, said the party was helped by its ability to appeal to both centre-left and centre-right voters, and by Jetten himself, who would become the country’s first out gay prime minister.

A one-time athlete who competed at for the Dutch youth team and a former climate minister, Jetten was “the anti-Wilders”, de Jonge said. Post-election surveys showed voters appreciated a message they described as “positive, calm and constructive”.

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Under the proportional Dutch system, 0.67% of the vote yields one MP, a bar that was cleared by 15 of the 27 parties contesting the election. No single party ever wins a majority, and the country has been governed by coalitions for more than a century.

Analysts suggested that the most likely constellation for the next government would be a broad D66-led coalition including the night’s other big winners, the Christian Democrat CDA, plus the liberal-conservative VVD and the centre-left GL/PvdA.

The CDA, who under their youthful leader, Henri Bontenbal, also campaigned for a return to “decent”, “responsible”, “respectful and on-topic” politics after the most extreme government in recent Dutch history, nearly quadrupled its seat tally to 18.

The VVD, which – like the other three members of the chaotic PVV-led cabinet – had fallen sharply in the polls before the vote, in the end managed to salvage a respectable result, finishing third on 22 seats, only two down on its previous tally.

The party, long led by the former prime minister Mark Rutte, is now headed by a former refugee from Turkey, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, whose future as party leader appeared in doubt before the vote but can now hope to be part of a centre-right government.

The GL/PvdA, however, suffered a disappointing night, tumbling from 25 seats to 20. The party’s leader, Frans Timmermans, a former European Commission vice-president, said he was quitting Dutch politics.

That broad “grand” coalition would have 86 seats, a majority of 10. An alternative formation – a more rightwing alliance of D66, VVD, CDA and JA21, a radical right spin-off from the PVV – had earlier appeared possible but would have only 75 seats, one short of a majority, and was anyway not D66’s favoured option.

However, analysts said a coalition involving GL/PvdA could take a long time to negotiate, with the conservative VVD in particular having long insisted it would not govern with the centre-left party. “Timmermans’ departure may make that easier,” de Lange said. Dutch coalitions can take months to negotiate.

Wilders’ setback did not mark a defeat for far-right populism in the Netherlands, cautioned de Jonge, noting that two other far-right parties, Forum for Democracy (FvD) and JA21, had made significant gains.

“This is not peak populism,” she said. “As a bloc, the far right gained one seat.” With trust in politicians at an all-time low, the next government faced a “hell of a job to pick up the pieces” and meet major challenges such as housing, climate change and migration, de Jonge said.