European Parliament Election: May 23-26, 2019

[DavidB.]

Turnout 34%, in 2014 it was 32%. Turnout in almost all cities (Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen) they track is already higher than in 2014. Final turnout will probably be higher than 40%

Good news. Big turnout spike after 6, just like in the PS election, where we were actually "behind schedule" until the evening too. Perhaps an effect of the economy doing better compared to 4-5 years ago?

[DavidB.]

Utrecht is at 47% already. They always have high turnout, but this is insane.

[DavidB.]

NOS sadly seem to be geoblocked

Hope to catch a bit of election vibe today and next few days, since I probably won't be able to follow much on Sunday evening, certainly not the official result at 11

Go for GeenStijl.

Won't have much time to comment here this evening - will be at a watchparty.

[DavidB.]

So there is a chance that 50+, PVV, SP and PvdD may all not reach the threshold making PvdA making gaining more seats. But that they have to return these seats after Brexit as the threshold will be lower which they will all reach as the there will 29 seats to distribute instead of 26 seats

my understanding was that they'd allocate seats based on the 29 seat allocation but then not make the last three MEPs until Brexit - that's wrong then?

Its done on the basis of 26 seats, so the no Brexit scenario

[DavidB.]

Geenstijl has PvdA 6 VVD 4 CDA 4 FVD 3 GL 3 CUSGP 2 D66 2 50Plus 1 PvdD 1 SP 0 PVV 0 volt 2% denk 1%

[DavidB.]

Geenstijl has PvdA 6 VVD 4 CDA 4 FVD 3 GL 3 CUSGP 2 D66 2 50Plus 1 PvdD 1 SP 0 PVV 0 volt 2% denk 1%

Was totally hammered when posting this, but this seems to be the 'final prognosis'.

Left-progressive voters form kind of a continuum and right-wing voters also do, even if the 'supply' side of parties does differ drastically in terms of policies offered. Based on the above prognosis (which might still change as PvdD/50Plus/SP/PVV hover around the threshold), the left-progressive parties D66-PvdA-GL-SP-PvdD received 12 seats, just like in 2014. The center-right/right-wing parties VVD-CDA-PVV-FVD-CUSGP received 13, one down from 2014. 50Plus is in with one and completes the picture. This is not much of a change, but that is noteworthy in itself, since almost all other post-2015 elections have seen a shift to the right. This one didn't.

However, euroskeptics lost a little bit compared to 2014. The combined score of FVD-PVV should still be up, somewhere in the 14% range (a far cry from the 21.5% or so in the PS election earlier this year), but the PVV is below the threshold, resulting in a net loss for nationalists. The anti-Timmermans ad by the SP completely backfired on them and might actually have been what won Timmermans the election. On the other hand, Eurofederalist PvdA and GL won. The PvdA's story is mostly because of Timmermans and they're still not getting anything close to 18% in a GE (Asscher was derided for sort-of claiming the victory), but at the same time it wouldn't have been possible without Asscher's work in parliament and as party leader: Asscher did create the conditions without which people would not have been willing to look into the PvdA anymore in the first place. Partly a case of time healing some wounds, but Asscher has done a good job at coming across as nuanced and constructive, which many left-progressive voters value. Timmermans, then, showed that there is a substantial number of people who are actually willing to vote for more EU and, perhaps, also cast a vote against the 'nationalist tide': he was the one who most embodied 'anti-populism'. The Netherlands is one of these countries where the mood on the EU swang the most following Brexit, which is part of the reason why Nexiteer parties bombed. What's more, there's this lesson the PVV learned in 2012 already when making the EU the centerpiece of their campaign: a lot more voters are anti-immigration than anti-EU.

A lot of people are clearly willing to give the PvdA another chance. Which has probably killed off the idea of a combined GL-PvdA list in the next election. GL's gains are good in the light of the PvdA's victory, but in a low-turnout election they should still be doing much better than the GE17 result, not just a little better. They have had a series of disappointingly low gains recently. Still, Klaver's narrative of a slow but steady rise can probably live on.

Another party with disappointing gains was FVD. While the party and its EP leader Eppink have relatively nuanced views on the EU on paper, Baudet, very much a Nexiteer, captured all the attention with his views, his controversial tweets (among which a video by the Austrian Identitarians which he retweeted), and with an essay touching on the negative side-effects of abortion, women's emancipation and euthanasia. The latter is particularly electorally toxic and it probably cost us at least one seat, seriously jeopardizing the narrative of Forum as the party to watch - we're only the fourth party now. Shows that at this point in the party's life, free attention isn't necessarily always good anymore. A valuable lesson to learn for more important elections.

[DavidB.]

^ Please stop this. Take it to Individual Politics. And especially stop with the U.S. 2016 nonsense.

Netherlands: Ipsos exit poll by age. Big ouch for the PvdA: even with 18% of the vote, 48% of their voters are 65 or older, even more than among 50Plus voters (LOL) and CDA voters. I suspect turnout among older voters has been really high. Only 13% of PvdA voters were younger than 35. I propose we call this season "PvdA II: Revenge of the Boomers".

https://twitter.com/NLUS_Politics/status/1131929392085647360

[DavidB.]

What I'd really like to know is who the 18-34 year olds that are voting for 50Plus are.

People who aren't enthused by any other party and receive it as their Votematch result, then look into their views and like it. Also perhaps people who prioritize elderly care and are often in contact with older people, either privately (ill family members) or professionally (in nursing).

PS19 to EP19 voter movement. A lot of PVV and SP voters simply stayed home:
https://nos.nl/data/image/2019/05/24/552268/1600x900.jpg (zelfde partij = same party in EP19, andere partij = different party in EP19, thuisgebleven = stayed home). All of this really suggests a very skewed electorate: somewhat older and much higher educated, much less working-class compared to other elections.

[DavidB.]

Prognosis Germany:

CDU-CSU 27.5
SPD 15.5
Greens 20.5
AfD 10.5
Linke 5.5
FDP 5.5
Partei 2.5
FW 2
Others 10%>

[DavidB.]

Where can I see election results (online)?

In this thread. What kind of question is this?

[DavidB.]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1132698986605887489

[DavidB.]

Ipsos prognosis:

RN 23.2%
LREM 21.9%
EELV 12.8%
LR 8.3%
LFI 6.7%
PS 6.7%
DLF 3.6%
G.s 3.4%

[DavidB.]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1132708479737765888

Really bad for DF considering that New Right and Paludan weren't on the ballot (but then they're probably disproportionally affected by lower turnout - but that wasn't a problem last time...). They may not even retain their second seat on these numbers, I think.

[DavidB.]

turnout was record high...

Sure, but still about 20 points lower than in a GE, and I suspect many of those are working-class potential DF voters.

[DavidB.]

Sweden:

[DavidB.]

Dutch results coming in here. PvdA results in Limburg are insane.

[DavidB.]

New prognosis on the basis of 90% of the vote is the same as the GeenPeil projection:

PvdA 6 (+3)
VVD 4 (+1), will gain 1 if Brexit happens
CDA 4 (-1)
FVD 3 (+3)
GL 3 (+1), will gain 1 if Brexit happens
D66 2 (-2)
CU-SGP 2 (nc)
50Plus 1 (+1)
PvdD 1 (nc)
PVV 0 (-4), will gain 1 if Brexit happens
SP 0 (-2)

[DavidB.]

Estonian result:

Reform 2 (nc)
SDE 2 (+1)
Center 1 (nc)
EKRE 1 (+1)
Isamaa 1 (nc)
Independents 0 (-1)

[DavidB.]

Belgium, EP results:

Dutch speakers:
N-VA 3 (-1)
Vlaams Belang 3 (+2)
Open VLD 2 (-1)
CD&V 2 (nc)
Groen 1 (nc)
sp.a 1 (nc)

French speakers:
PS 2 (-1)
Ecolo 2 (+1)
MR 2 (-1)
PTB 1 (+1)
cdH 1 (nc)

German speakers:
CSP 1 (nc)

[DavidB.]

40% of the vote in:

BREXIT: 30.5%
LDem: 21.1%
Lab: 15.2%
Greens: 12.4%
Con: 8.6%
ChUK: 3.6%
UKIP: 3.3%
SNP: 2.1%
PC: 1.6%

[DavidB.]

The difference between FVD and GL is only a few hundred votes, but will decide who gets the 3rd and last Dutch post-Brexit seat (if Brexit still happens). Ten municipalities still have to report which should almost all benefit FVD, but an unknown number of postal votes from abroad still have to come in too.

[DavidB.]

We did end up bigger than GL in the end, by 3.000 votes, which means the three post-Brexit seats would go to VVD (5th seat), PVV (1st seat) and FVD (4th seat). Full results here. More than 10% of the vote went straight to the bin. Good reminder for those who seek to introduce an electoral threshold on the national level.

As for why FVD underperformed: turnout was always going to be disproportionately lower among eurosceptics compared to the PS election, which required a flawless GOTV operation in addition to positioning ourselves in a way that also attracts CDA and VVD voters who aren't necessarily too hot on Nexit, which is as unpopular as the plague at this point. Both didn't occur. The controversy surrounding Baudet's essay on Houellebecq probably didn't help either, especially among female voters. I think the essay was brilliant but the timing wasn't.

[DavidB.]

Italy
61,539 out of 61,576 polling stations reported


Lega 34.27
PD 22.73
5 Stars 17.06
Forza Italia 8.78
Fratelli d'Italia 6.45

Seems as if Lega did much better than the exit poll suggested, M5S a bit worse. Hope M5S' losses don't undermine the stability of the coalition. Though I expected them to fare much worse at this point.

[DavidB.]

They're slowly counting the full vote in Sweden now - only 73/6305 precincts in.

Exciting for the Liberals - their preliminary result was 4.1% and the threshold to get into parliament is 4%. They're currently below 4% in the count and these are precints they did better than their national average in last time. But obviously this is mega early so you can't actually extrapolate from it.

Doesn't their electorate turn out disproportionately well in lower-turnout elections though?

[DavidB.]

Amazing result. Huge PiS, Confederacy out (which presumably means they'll be in shambles and fighting each other long before the parliamentary election too).