BBC News
By Anna Holligan
image captionThirty-seven parties are standing in the Dutch election
His government collapsed over a racial profiling scandal in the tax office, his country was the last in Europe to roll-out its vaccination programme, and with an average of 5,000 new daily infections, the Netherlands remains under its strictest lockdown to date.
And yet, Mark Rutte, the prime minister who presided over all of this, is odds on for a fourth term in an election involving 37 different political parties.
Why this election matters
With coronavirus restrictions in place, polls opened for vulnerable voters on 15 March, and everyone else votes on Wednesday in what will be the first "Covid election" in the EU this year.