Austerity-minded Liberals lead in Dutch vote

AMSTERDAM - Austerity-minded Liberals won a narrow one-seat lead in the Dutch election, putting them in pole position to form a coalition that must tackle a ballooning budget deficit, preliminary results showed on Thursday.

The election ousted Christian Democrat Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende from eight years in office, and Geert Wilders' anti-immigration Freedom Party nearly doubled its seats to be the third-largest parliamentary group and a possible kingmaker.

With 98 percent of the votes counted, the rightist-leaning Liberals had 20.4 percent of total votes for 31 seats in the 150-member parliament against 19.6 percent for 30 seats for the Labour Party, which wants slower and fewer cuts to tackle a deficit expected to reach 6.6 percent of GDP this year.