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REFERENCE 18 Feb, 2019

EU Parliament Election in May Could Spell Trouble for Europe’s Big Parties

Conservatives and Social Democrats look set to lose out

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REFERENCE EU Parliament Election in May Could Spell Trouble for Europe’s Big Parties Share Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via E-Mail

Poll of Polls is a Vienna-based group that aggregates national polling across the EU. One of its projects tracks voter sentiment in each country leading up to the European Parliament (EP) election on May 23-26. In the rare cases where it finds polls ask­ing speci­fi­ally about the vot­ing in­ten­tion for the EP elec­tion, it uses them. Otherwise it uses surveys measuring popularity and voting trends in each country.  (There are no EU-wide polls.)

Its interactive overview map is particularly interesting – an easy way to get an impression of how the race is shaping up from country to country. Their “seat tracker,” which is updated every day, projects the number of seats that the EP party blocs, such as the conservatives’ European People's Party (EPP) group, which includes Christian democrats, such as Angela Merkel’s CDU, but also Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party (and not Poland’s in-office conservatives Party of Law and Justice, PiS).

The survey’s current aggregate bodes ill for some of Europe’s biggest parties, like the EPP. It projects that the EPP, currently the largest bloc with 221 of 751 seats, slipping down to 177 seats in an EP of 705. The Social Democratic bloc loses out too: dropping from 191 to 133.

The EU-skeptical far right is hardest to size up since it extends over different blocs, even into the EPP. The three rightist groups are Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD), Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENL), and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). And then there are parties like Spain’s Vox and Hungary’s Jobbik that are not in any of the blocs. Currently, polls have the ECR and the ENL losing seats, and the EFDD picking up a few more seats in the slightly downsized EP.

The Greens appear set to lose a few seats too while the European United Left–Nordic Green Left could well gain.

[Text author: Paul Hockenos]

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