Summary
5 June 2009
Exit polls in the Netherlands suggest the far right Freedom Party has come second overall. The party's leader, Geert Wilders, said the votes showed the Dutch people had rejected a European superstate.
Reporter:
Stephen Chittenden
Geert Wilders is banned from the UK
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Report
If the exit polls are confirmed, Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party will have come from nowhere to second place in the Netherlands in just a few years. The far right party and its maverick leader are set to take around 15% of the vote, pushing Labour, which is part of Holland's ruling coalition, into third place.
If the results are confirmed, the Freedom Party will send at least four members to the European parliament. Mr Wilders said the Dutch people had sent a message that they're sick of being ruled from Brussels.
Geert Wilders was banned from the UK after making a film which linked verses from the Koran with the terrorist attacks on New York and London. He's pledged to use his electoral success as a springboard for a fresh attempt to visit Britain.
Stephen Chittenden, 大象传媒 News, The Hague
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Vocabulary
- exit polls
- asking people as they leave a polling station - i.e. a place at which people vote - about how they voted, to try to predict who is going to win the election
- far right
- extremely conservative, strongly supporting past values that most people don't consider to be relevant anymore
- maverick
- someone who thinks and behaves in a way that's different to most other people
- are set to take
- look certain to win
- sent a message
- here, said in a powerful and memorable way
- they're sick of being ruled
- they no longer want to be told what to do and how to live
- banned from
- here, refused the right to enter
- pledged
- formally and solemnly promised
- springboard
- something that provides opportunity (literally, a springboard is a flexible board that's used in gymnastics and diving to help you jump higher)
