Rob Jetten’s centrist-liberal party D66 are in a neck-and-neck race with anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders in the Dutch election, according to latest vote projections.

With about 98% of votes counted, both D66 and Wilders’ Freedom Party were heading for 26 seats in the 150-member parliament, a projection from Dutch news agency ANP said on Thursday.

Initial exit polls had put Jetten in the lead. “Millions of Dutch people have turned a page; they’ve said goodbye to a politics of negativity,” he told supporters.

A downbeat Wilders had earlier conceded the result was not what he wanted, having lost 11 seats, but said he had still achieved his second best result ever.

The race was so close there were fewer than 1,200 votes between the two frontrunners as counting continued on Thursday. Three other parties were not far behind, including the conservative liberals on 22 seats, followed by the left-wing GreenLeft-Labour party and the Christian Democrats.

Wilders led the polls throughout the election campaign, but after he pulled the plug on his own coalition in June in a row over asylum and migration, all the mainstream leaders made clear they did not wish to work with him again.

He admits he has little hope of forming a government himself, but said on X on Thursday that if his party did top the vote he should have the first try. Even without a clear-cut victory, Jetten – who staged a remarkable campaign – would stand a stronger chance of leading the next administration.

Only a few weeks ago, the polls put D66 on just 12 seats, but the photogenic, 38-year-old liberal leader capitalised on polished performances in a succession of TV debates and interviews.

The fact that he also competed in a TV quiz show called The Smartest Person in the weeks leading to the vote only added to his public profile.

Jetten was careful not to claim victory on Wednesday night, despite the party mood among his supporters.

The conservative liberal VVD of Dilan Yesilgöz was also heading for a successful night in third place and her party would be a good fit for any potential Jetten-led coalition.

Going into Wednesday’s election, voters knew the result would be on a knife-edge, as five parties were in the running to win. Wilders’ PVV Freedom Party had won 37 seats in November 2023, but many of those voters will have been put off by the realisation he would struggle to find parties to work with him again.

It took seven months for Wilders to reach a deal with coalition partners in 2024, only to bring down the government 11 months later.

Rob Jetten made clear he was looking for a broad-based coalition that was both “stable and ambitious”, and he pointed out it was unprecedented for the winning party to score fewer than 30 seats in parliament.

He named the Labour(PvdA)-GreenLeft of former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans as one potential coalition partner, along with Yesilgöz’s conservative liberals and a revitalised Christian Democrat CDA.

The exit poll spelt bad news for Timmermans, whose left-wing party had long been second in the polls and is now set to come fourth.

“Better times lie ahead,” he promised his supporters late on Wednesday. “Of course I’m hugely disappointed,” he added, and announced he was stepping down and taking responsibility for the result.

Timmermans and Wilders are both in their early 60s and entered politics at the same time, and there is now a sense that Dutch voters are prepared to try something new.

Wilders, however, said he was going nowhere: “You won’t be rid of me until I’m 80.” He remained bullish about his Freedom Party’s performance: “I would naturally rather have seen more seats… but we have still had our second best result.”

Matthijs Rooduijn of the University of Amsterdam said Wilders’ party had lost the support of many of its moderate voters to other parties as well as many on the more radical side.

But, he said, “the losses could have been worse”, given that Wilders had himself broken up the last coalition and had campaigned less actively than his rivals.

There was palpable excitement as D66 supporters gathered for the results at a music venue in Leiden, a university city between Amsterdam and The Hague. As the exit polls became clear, the words “yes, we can” were voiced repeatedly as a kind of party mantra in the hall.

Taking to the stage, the man now tipped to be the youngest prime minister in modern Dutch history told supporters “we did it – the best result D66 has ever achieved”.

“We also know that millions of Dutch people voted for other parties, and I also feel a very heavy responsibility for [all of them],” said Rob Jetten. “We will do all we can in the coming years to show all the Dutch people that politics and government can be there for them again so they can think big again and act big again so the Netherlands can move forward.”

This election was partly fought on migration and overcrowded asylum centres, but the biggest issue for voters was the chronic housing shortage of almost 400,000 homes, in a population of 18 million.

Jetten’s party has said it will build 10 cities as part of its plan to tackle the crisis.

“It was a campaign of optimism, it shows the Dutch are tired of two years of standstill, we recognise big challenges and we want progress on those,” said D66 supporter Eline. “It shows the Dutch are craving a prime minister who is able to unite the country and tackle the major challenges our country and the world are facing.”

Another potential coalition partner for the liberals is the Christian Democrats, who only two years ago looked down and out with just a handful of seats. Now they are projected to win 18.

“What a fantastic result – two years ago we could not have dared to dream of this,” CDA leader Henri Bontenbal told supporters as they chanted his name.