The time of voting is nigh. The polls open tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM, and close at 9:00 PM local time (3 PM EST). If I manage to catch the early flight home (which I should be able to do), I'll have the exit poll results here as and when they're shown on television with regular updates throughout the night.

Since the fall of the Dutch government, the political circus has been traveling from town to town and monopolizing the airwaves. The situation is somewhat different from what I predicted in my original comment following the government's collapse. In the early polling the LPF seemed to be on the verge of extinction, but they managed to claw their way back to a low level of stable support. As campaigning wore on, the polls shifted in favor of scary-very-far-left Socialist Party (not to be confused with the Labor Party) which seemed to be picking up a lot of support. The biggest winner in all of this is the Labour Party, which might even end up being the biggest party in parliament. Before I go into the electoral arithmetic, here's a list of the parties which are likely to win seats tomorrow (current number of seats in parentheses, 76 needed for majority):

CDA: the Christian Democrats (43 seats now). Classic European middle-of-the-road consensus party. It's essentially conservative with a small c; averse to change, steady-as-she-goes. The CDA does still retain some of its religious roots, for instance in its opposition to euthanisia and abortion, but even this tends to be rather tepid. The current prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende is the leader of the CDA. Current polls put it at around 40 seats.

LPF: List Pim Fortuyn (26 seats), named after its founder and leading light. Its internal wrangles and theatrics eroded its support very quickly and led to the fall of the government. Simply put, you just could not take the LPF seriously, and it looked like it was going to disintegrate completely. It's now polling at around seven seats, which is going to make the LPF the biggest loser of tomorrow's election. But considering how close they were to complete extinction, even the seven seats are something of a victory. Its platform is an extension of Pim Fortuyn's original election program, but the LPF is now becoming more of a traditional right-wing European party with an authoritarian streak in some of its ideas an law enforcement. The LPF had a unique opportunity to reshape Dutch politics and break the old elites' strangehold on power, but they screwed it up royally.

VVD: the Liberal Party (24 seats), more or less in the classical sense of the word. Well, if you look carefully with a microscope, you might find the classical Liberal heritage in the VVD, but it's now a slightly right-of-center party with a preference for less socialism and lower taxes, if possible. Some of their proposals on law and order would make any classical Liberal cringe. The LPF's collapse should have benefited the VVD, as it, of the "old" parties, is closest in program to the LPF. However, the VVD is polling at 29 seats, a pickup of just 5. It has not managed to attract the LPF voters, it seems.

PvdA: the Labor Party (23 seats), also known as the Social Democrats. If polls are to be believed, Labor will be the biggest winner tommorw, vaulting over the CDA to become the largest party in parliament with 42 seats. Part of this support must come from ex-LPF voters, who perhaps flirted earlier in the campaign with the SP. This indicates that the LPF's support was not as strongly ideological as previously might have been thought, since the LPF and SP programs are very, very far apart. In any case, the resurgence of the Labor party means a return to more politics as usual.

GreenLeft: (10 seats) the whacko enviroloony left, born out of various communist and radical parties of the past. Their program contains all the stuff you might expect from a party with this kind of name. Polls show them at 7 seats now.

SP:, the Socialist Party (9 seats), which is not far from being stalinist in its electoral program. At one point during the campaign it was slated to win over 20 seats in parliament, almost eclipsing Labor at the time. The fewer votes they get, the better; polls show them at around 11 seats now. I'd much rather see those votes go to less insane Labor party.

D'66: Democrats '66 (7 seats), usually referred to as Left Liberal, although a more accurate description would be that it's the party people used to vote for when they didn't know whom to vote for. It was often the third (small) party in a coalition of two bigger ones. It's a bland, safe, non-threatening somewhat left-of-center party whose main idea of referenda and direectly elected mayors has been stolen by many others, mostly based on Pim Fortuyn's advocacy of such issues. I have no idea how it differs from Labor. Opinion polls give it 6 seats.

ChristenUnie: now at 4 seats, it's the result of a merger of the GPV and RPF. Together with the SGP these parties used to be called "Small Right," because of their strongly religious conservatism and small national impact. They're the Dutch version of the Religious Right, although that's a slightly misleading way of describing them. They seem much more at ease with socialism than the religious loonies of the GOP ever could be. Polls give them 5 seats now.

SGP: at 2 seats it's the third "small right" party which couldn't bring itself to merge with the GPV and RPF based on disagreements on religious doctrine. I would not be able to tell their electoral programs apart, but to them it's a big deal apparently. Polls show them keeping their 2 seats.

LN: Liveable Netherlands (2 seats) was the original grass-roots party which tried to storm the elites' fortress. Pim Fortuyn was briefly its leader before they kicked him out again and he started the LPF. The LN party is now led by a teenager after a staggering string of internal disputes. Even the LPF has more credibility. They may retain one seat in parliament.

So there you have it. The electoral battle has been complicated by the fact that the Labor campaign leader (the one who's at the top of the party list) Wouter Bos has declared he will not seek the office of Prime Minister if Labor becomes the largest party. Instead, Labor only this weekend put forward the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen as a prime ministerial candidate in case Labor get to supply the PM.

In terms of possible coalitions (76 seats are needed for a majority), the CDA and the VVD would like to continue to govern, but without their current LPF partners. Early on the in campaign both parties had said they would not form another coalition with the LPF. But that was when they were ahead in the polls and could form a government on their own. Now that the deadline nears, they're furiously backpedaling on their earlier statement and saying that perhaps a coalition with the LPF might be possible after all.

The left-leaning parties don't have the numbers to form a government based on the poll results. At one point, the specter of a Labor-SP-GreenLeft coalition began to loom (and immediate emigration for yours truly), but they're nowhere near the level of support they need. So the only viable alternative to a CDA-VVD-LPF coalition is a CDA-Labor coalition. There have been such coalitions in the past and if the numbers don't add up for other combinations, this looks like the most feasible majority.

Of course, all of this is based on opinion polls. We'll see in less than 24 hours how accurate they were. As I said, I will be posting exit poll numbers as soon as I get them off the TV tomorrow at 9 PM local, 3 PM EST.