Voters and leading contenders cast their ballots across the Netherlands on Wednesday in a close-run snap election called after anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders brought down the last four-party coalition in a dispute over a crackdown on immigration.

The campaign echoed issues that resonate across Europe, focusing on how to rein in migration and tackle chronic shortages of affordable housing.

But in a country where coalition governments are the norm, it's unclear if parties will work with Wilders again, even if his Party for Freedom repeats its stunning victory from two years ago.

Mainstream parties have already ruled that out, arguing that his decision to torpedo the outgoing four-party coalition in June in a dispute over migration underscored that he is an untrustworthy partner.

Frans Timmermans, the former European Commission vice president who now leads the centre-left bloc made up of the Labor Party and Green Left, took his black labrador to a polling station in his home city of Maastricht in the southern Netherlands.

The vote comes against a backdrop of deep polarization in this nation of 18 million, violence at a recent anti-immigration rally in The Hague and protests against new asylum-seeker centres.

Voting was taking place at venues from city halls to schools, but also historic windmills, churches, a zoo, a former prison in Arnhem and the iconic Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam.

Polls suggest that Wilders’ party, which is calling for a total halt to asylum-seekers entering the Netherlands, remains on track to win the largest number of seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives. But other more moderate parties are closing the gap and pollsters caution that many people wait until the very last minute to decide who to vote for.

Polls close at 9 p.m. followed by an initial exit poll.

AP video by Mark Carlson