Right-wing populist leader Geert Wilders, center right, arrives for a meeting of party leaders with the chairwoman of the parliament to discus first steps in forming a new dutch coalition government in The Hague, Netherlands, Thursday, March 16, 2017. Dutch political parties were preparing Thursday to start what will likely be a long process of coalition talks after Prime Minister Mark Rutte's right-wing VVD easily won national elections, defying polls that suggested a close race with anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Right-wing populist leader Geert Wilders, center right, arrives for a meeting of party leaders with the chairwoman of the parliament to discus first steps in forming a new dutch coalition government in The Hague, Netherlands, Thursday, March 16, 2017. Dutch political parties were preparing Thursday to start what will likely be a long process of coalition talks after Prime Minister Mark Rutte's right-wing VVD easily won national elections, defying polls that suggested a close race with anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) Credit: ap — Peter Dejong

The Hague — The Dutch anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders acknowledged on Thursday that voters denied him a chance to rule his nation. But to many Dutch Muslims, his victory was secured long before his nation’s nail-biter election.

The re-elected Dutch prime minister told immigrants to fit in or get out. A likely coalition partner wants to impose restrictions on refugees. A nation once known for its laid-back tolerance is now focused on its divisions. And while European leaders breathed a sigh of relief that a raucous populist had been beaten back ahead of elections this year in France and Germany, many Muslims say that Wilders’ raw racism is still ascendant.

Europe has a new face, they say — and it’s that of the blond-haired bomb thrower from the Netherlands.

“I was a bit surprised at how disappointed I was this morning,” said Sabri Saad El Hamus, 59, an actor and theater producer in Amsterdam who migrated from Egypt in 1978. Despite the loss for Wilders, the future ruling coalition will still move to the right on immigration, Hamus said.

“We were all expecting the Trump effect and it didn’t happen, but we’re not done with it,” he said.

He still fears that Wilders will eventually capture the prime minister’s office.

Overall, Dutch voters rewarded right-wing parties, many of which delivered tough lines on immigration.

The Netherlands’ fractious political system makes some parties hard to classify, but parties that hold traditionally left-wing views on the economy won only 37 of 150 legislative seats following a wipeout by the center-left Labor Party.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte took a hard line against immigration during the campaign, in a bid to capture some of the Wilders vote. But having tacked rightward, Rutte is now on the hook for the campaign rhetoric, giving many Dutch Muslims little comfort in his victory. And Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy still shed nearly a quarter of its seats in parliament.

Wilders harvested electoral gains even as he fell short of projections that once positioned him as the front-runner. After a campaign to ban the Koran and shut down mosques across the Netherlands, he captured 13 percent of the vote on Wednesday, compared with 10 percent in the previous elections, and boosted his seats by a third. The showing made him the leader of the second-largest party in the Netherlands.

“Now we are the 2nd largest party. Next time we will be nr. 1!” he wrote on Twitter on Thursday. Earlier in the day, immediately after the results started coming in, he declared that a “patriotic spring” had begun in Europe and vowed to continue fighting.

Rutte began the difficult work on Thursday of forming a governing coalition, a process that is expected to take weeks or even months. Dutch citizens spread their votes across a wide spectrum of parties, electing 13 of them to parliament.

Rutte will have to persuade at least three other parties to join his side, coming to office with a weak coalition whose main unifying principle is that it is anti-Wilders. That could be a long-term benefit to the right-wing firebrand if he can convince his voters that mainstream politicians are unjustly shutting their voices out of government.