With half the votes counted, Belgium’s national and regional elections look set to deliver an upset. Contrary to expectations, the far-right Vlaams Belang party is not at the forefront in Flanders. Party leader Tom van Greken’s party receives 21.9 percent. This is not enough to become the biggest.

The conservative N-VA party, led by Bart de Wever, has 25.2 percent. If relations remained intact, De Wever could keep his promise that he would not rule with Vlaams Belang. Other parties also excluded Vlaams Belang as a coalition partner.

There is also a loss for Belgian Prime Minister De Croo’s liberal Open VLD party. His party received half as many votes in the 6:30pm standings as last time and now stands at 7.7 percent. The disappointment was so great that the press gathered at headquarters Those gathered from the party were sent abroad. The Christian Democrats CD&V lost by a narrow margin of 12.8 percent.

There is a victory for the Social Democrats in Voruit and the radical left PVDA. In the initial results, the percentage was 13.6 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively. It’s been exciting all day for Gruen. Belgium has an electoral threshold of 5%. Green is currently 7.4 percent.

Vote counting delayed in Flanders. Computers malfunctioned in a number of polling stations. Therefore, these polling stations closed only at six in the evening instead of four in the evening as scheduled.

It seems that a surprise is also emerging in Wallonia. In a poll conducted after the exit from a Brussels university, the radical left-wing PTB party came out on top. This is very unexpected. The PTB received 24 percent of the vote in the exit poll in which 6,000 voters were interviewed. It is followed by the Social Democratic Party (PS) and the center-right Reform Movement (MR) party with 21 percent.

Pollsters are finding it difficult to reach less-educated voters and those with an immigrant background, said political scientist Dave Senardet at De Morgen. “PTB voters anyway,” Senardet said.

Today the Federal Parliament also voted. Voting behavior in Flanders and Wallonia will probably not deviate from voting for regional parliaments. A PTB victory in Wallonia is expected to make forming a federal government more difficult than usual.