I'm a little disappointed with the reporting that says that Rutte 'won' the election. His party, VVD, lost 8 seats and ended up with only 22% of the seats in parliament (33 seats out of 150 seats). His partner in government, PvdA, lost very badly. (Results).

And Geert Wilders' party gained seats, up five to a total of 20.

So I'd prefer to say that nobody won. In many European countries, no party gets even close to 50% of the seats and therefore we can't say that anybody 'won'.

The Netherlands is the most extreme example of this that I've seen, where the vote is split across so many parties that the largest party has only 22% of the seats.

Given that Rutte and Wilders together only have 53 out of 150 seats, it's mathematically possible to put together a government that doesn't include either. That, of course, requires finding enough common ground among enough of the other parties; and I don't know enough Dutch politics to put together a workable combination. So I'm not saying that Rutte won't be prime minister again, but I also don't like saying that say he has won before he has successufully put together a coalition agreement has been reached.