New Delhi, Oct. 29 -- Polls opened 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.

In The Hague, a steady stream of commuters stopped to vote at a polling station set up at the city's central railway station, next to the Dutch parliament building.

Opinion polls forecast a close finish with Wilders' Party for Freedom holding a narrow lead over a group of more moderate parties including the center-left bloc of the Labor Party and Green Left, and the center-right Christian Democrats.

"It hasn't been this tense for a long time," Wilders said late Tuesday on Dutch news show Nieuwsuur after ...