Big changes on the Dutch political landscape are the main message that comes through in foreign coverage of the Dutch election. There is also in-depth coverage of the huge gains made by the "right-wing populist" Geert Wilders.

"Economic Worries Are Central in Dutch Vote," writes the New York Times, adding, "The Dutch elections were dominated by the economic crisis".

Right-wing
BBC World News reports that the Dutch electorate has swung to the right, "As results emerged it became clear that Dutch voters had shifted to the right in Wednesday's national elections, dominated by concerns over the rising national debt and discontent over immigration". A similar analysis is repeated on many a website and in numerous newspapers.

Audio clip: BBC headline on Dutch election winners and losers

The New York Times also refers to uncertain political times in the Netherlands in the wake of the 2002 murder of anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn and the 2004 murder of filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh.

Neck-and-neck
Because the provisional results were not released until the early hours of Thursday morning, most of the morning papers could only report on the election cliff-hanger: the almost equal number of seats won by the centre-right liberal VVD and the centre-left Labour Party. Switzerland's Neue Zürcher Zeitung calls it a "Kopf-an-Kopf-rennen".

All the foreign media cover the huge wins by Geert Wilders' PVV. In the UK, the Guardian sums the results up concisely with "Gain for anti-Islam party in Dutch poll - Humiliating crash of Christian Democrat vote but no overall winner".

Jan Peter who?
The departure of caretaker Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende receives very little coverage even though Mr Balkenende's Christian Democrat CDA has been the largest party for the past eight years and Wednesday's election halved in the party's number of MPs.

The time difference means that most Asian newspapers haven't yet covered the election results: the papers were already on the stands when the provisional results were released. The papers in Latin America haven't come out yet but the website of Chile's El Mercurio newspaper does have one article about the results and the departure of Mr Balkenende. The Dutch elections were not covered in the Arab media.

Rutte at the helm
The foreign media say that VVD leader Mark Rutte is facing a huge task and his photo is plastered everywhere. The Times of India says the situation is complicated: "Partial results point to deadlock in Netherlands election," and CNN says the coalition negotiations could take months.

Much of the foreign media agrees that the PVV wants to be part of the new governing coalition and the French daily Le Monde reports that Mr Wilders says it is time for concessions: "Nous voulons gouverner et nous devons être prêts à faire des concessions", says the paper.
The Times of India reports that the 74 percent turnout is the lowest since 1998 and find it surprising that the Dutch electorate were forced to vote with pencil and paper. In this computer age, most Dutch people also found it a touch old-fashioned.

RNW translation (jirc)