Dutch voters went to the polls on Wednesday to vote on the European Union's constitutional treaty amid indications of a high turnout and with a late opinion poll suggesting there may not be a landslide No that many have predicted.
The Interview NSS survey for Dutch television on Tuesday showed Yes with 46 per cent to No's 54 per cent, on a turnout of 46 per cent. A poll on Monday had 60 per cent against the treaty, immediately following the French referendum.
By 11am, Dutch television was reporting that 12 per cent had voted - more than last year's European parliamentary election which resulted in a turnout of 39.1 per cent.
However the Dutch are almost certain to ignore the advice of the most of their political leaders, newspapers, businesses and trades unions and join the French in saying No.
Yes campaigners were out in force as the poll gave them an incentive to try to close the gap. The Green Party and the social democrat PvdA stood shoulder-to-shoulder at train stations to leaflet commuters. However, party workers and politicians admitted the referendum was probably a lost cause.
"Nothing is impossible, but the chance that the Netherlands votes Yes is very small," said pollster Maurice de Hond. Ben Bot, Dutch foreign minister, said: "We had hoped for a neck-and-neck race [but] . . . it looks as if it is going to be a No vote."
The gulf between public and political opinion in the Netherlands appears to mirror the French experience, according to opinion polls which show that fewer than a fifth of the Dutch people have confidence in their government.
The vote also carries echoes of events three years ago in the Netherlands, when Jan Peter Balkenende was elected prime minister.
He benefited at the time from a protest vote that expelled from power the centre-left parties that had been seen as elitist and distant from the electorate.
Mr Balkenende's Christian Democrat Alliance led a government appointed amid a national wave of angst and insecurity that had fuelled the rise of the List Pim Fortuyn party - named after the murder of its founder, the populist Pim Fortuyn.
After that shortlived government fell apart, Mr Balkenende won a second election and rebuilt his cabinet. This administration has weathered problems, not always of its own making, including the social turmoil caused by two murders by extremists and a deep economic recession that forced unpopular austerity measures.
But Mr Balkenende's government now stands accused of the central charge that was levelled against the administration of his predecessor Wim Kok. De Telegraaf, the Netherlands' biggest selling national newspaper, on Monday branded the current government elitist. It wrote in an editorial that, like the Kok government, Mr Balkenende's had ignored the public, in this case by not explaining "what it was busy with in Brussels".
"Whatever the government decides next, it must lead its people better," the newspaper stated.
Mr Balkenende's CDA, the main constituent of the government coalition, did not want a referendum, which was called for by parliament.
But the government's initial reluctance to campaign for a Yes vote with anything more than a simple information campaign allowed No voters to make their arguments unopposed, building what now appears to be an unassailable lead.
A senior European diplomat in The Hague said that, while there were parallels with France, the issues informing the Dutch No vote were different.
"The angst in France is to do with the Anglo-Saxon model, globalisation and liberalisation. Here it is about social policies and financial issues [such as the single currency]," he said.
Furthermore, Mr Balkenende's government faces an electorate that has been emboldened by recent experience, a fact that populist politicians such as Geert Wilders, the rightwinger who is central to the No campaign, have been quick to capitalise upon.
Diplomats in The Hague say they are in no doubt that a slicker government campaign across a united front might have succeeded in winning support for the treaty.
