EP elections 2014 - Results Thread

[Diouf]

Today the leaders of the European Parliament gather to discuss the outcome and the process of finding the new Commission President. This evening the European Council will meet to discuss the same things.

As expected, David Cameron is trying to gather a blocking minority against any of the front runners appointed by the European parties; this mainly means blocking Juncker at the moment. The only supporter who has publicly supported this block so far is Viktor Orbán, who is probably not to pleased about some of the comments regarding his party from many in the top of EPP, including Juncker.

Downing Street also announced that Cameron had called Chancellor Merkel, President Grybauskaite, PM Orban, PM Reinfeldt, PM Bratusek and Taoiseach Kenny to discuss the process. Sources say that he believe that they are his main potential allies. However, I doubt whether Merkel would really want to dump Juncker, and Kenny has supported Juncer publicly at the EPP conference in Dublin where he was elected.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-calls-to-european-leaders-ahead-of-informal-european-council



Faymann supports Juncker as the EPP won the election

[Velasco]

Podemos and their young leader Pablo Iglesias confirmed they are joining GUE-NGL.


http://www.publico.es/politica/523095/podemos-acuerda-con-tsipras-entrar-en-el-grupo-de-la-izquierda-unitaria-de-la-eurocamara

According to the above article GUE-NGL will get all 6 of the IU seats, but perhaps the writer made a mistake.
I'm interested in seeing whether the success of Podemos and IU and the failure of PSOE can lead to changes in Spanish politics.

http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.politics&id=1970

That article is wrong. The 'Izquierda Plural' list won 6 seats (4 IU, 1 ICV, 1 Anova). The IU and Anova (AGE, Galicia) elected MEPs will join GUE-NGL, but ICV is member of the European Greens and will join their group as usual.

I don't know how the success of Podemos will change Spanish politics, but I think it's impossible that things will remain the same. Pablo Iglesias may be 'radical', 'demagogue', 'messianic' or whatever but I am happy for the Podemos result because the Spanish political class needs a kick on the ass, including the 'official' alternatives for the PP-PSOE rule (the ambiguous UPyD and the PCE-controlled IU). Podemos ("We Can") was born as a political party only 3 or 4 months ago and is still under construction. There's a lot of enthusiasm among its membership and they ran an excellent campaign with very little money. Podemos and IU had talks before the elections, but they ran separately because IU rejected a Podemos' proposal on open primaries to elect the candidates (PCE's hierarchy abhors such things). I think the result of IU and Podemos running in coalition would not have been so good (they got 18% running separately). The Pablo Iglesias' party managed to attract many abstentionists. Podemos can be considered a heir and a consequence of the 15M Movement of 2011 and perhaps Pablo Iglesias may become in the Spanish Tsipras.

The election result has had consequences in PSOE. Rubalcaba called for an extraordinary party convention and will quit from PSOE's leadership. Criticism arose from potential candidates like Carme Chacón and Eduardo Madina, because they want open primaries before the party convention. Apparently, Rubalcaba's decision to call PSOE's convention before the primaries was due to pressures from the Andalusian premier Susana Díaz. PSOE had a decent result in its traditional stronghold and Díaz is one of the strongest contenders for national leadership. Susana Díaz will play with advantage in a convention, because she controls the main party's federation which has a lot of delegates. Postponing the primaries makes no sense if you want to open the party and recover people's confidence -in my opinion, this decision is a fiasco-. Anyway the establishment works according its own logic and interests.

[freek]

Dutch results, still preliminary (three municipalities counted their votes yesterday, as part of an experiment with vote counting on a central location on the day after the elections). Also, the postal votes are not included yet:



CDA won a 5th seat because of their alliance with CU/SGP
PvdA won a 3rd seat because of their alliance with GroenLinks

[swl]

Was Godfrey Bloom running for these elections?

[Diouf]

The outcome of the meeting between the EP group leaders:

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http://www.lse.co.uk/AllNews.asp?code=56crpz52&headline=EU_parliament_leaders_rally_round_Juncker_for_top_job

[swl]

The outcome of the meeting between the EP group leaders:

The MEPs know what's at stake here, if Juncker becomes the Commission President it will be an unwritten rule for the next elections and it will benefit them on the long term.

I think Cameron is alone on this one... Maybe he will manage to get Orban with him, but even him in the EPP so I expect him to support the EPP candidate.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Sigh... Junker is the worst possible answer to these election results.

[Diouf]

Do you think that EPP will accept Mussolini to their group?

I guess they will just do as with all other Forza Italia MEPs; hope no one notices them. If asked, they will just mumble that all groups have some funny guys and move on quickly. I think it will only be a problem if she makes some crazy comments like the last time when she made the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty explode after stating that all Romanians are criminals. She could, however, be a good guess on a MEP that leaves the EPP at some point and then join of the various Eurosceptic groups.
I can see Antonio Tajani, the European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, ran for Forza Italia and was elected with a good personal result. So I guess he could very well be the leader of the FI delegation as he was from June 1999 until May 2008.

[justfollowingtheelections]

The 2 Potami MEPs are joining the S&D group.

http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.politics&id=1973

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[Tetro Kornbluth]

We are still counting.

Fine Gael are now certain to win the remaining two seats in South with Sean Kelly being the first over the line and then between Deirdre Clune and Simon Harris for the last, Clune is currently 3,000 votes ahead of Harris and will all depend on how the 2nd FF's candidates second preferences will be distributed. However, there's no particular reason why those should favour Harris over Clune so it's the Cork Woman who is very likely to be elected (meaning no Wicklow by-election )

In Midlands-North West it is between Maria Harkin (IND; ALDE) and Pat 'The Cope' Gallagher (FF; ummm... ALDE) for the fourth and final seat. The 2nd FF candidate has been eliminated but Harkin is over 20,000 votes ahead at this stage so she is favoured, but it will probably be close and might go down to surpluses.

[neosmyrnian]

Any thoughts about the European Parliament election in Greece?

The results are:
SYRIZA: 26.58%, 6 seats
ND: 22.71%, 5 seats
Golden Dawn: 9.40%, 3 seats
Elia: 8.02%, 2 seats
Potami: 6.60%, 2 seats
KKE: 6.09%, 2 seats
Independent Greeks: 3.46%, 1 seat

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm surprised SYRIZA was so low, actually - lower than in the last legislative elections. Weren't they supposed to win about 30% ?

[Tender Branson]

More or less OK results in Greece.

[windjammer]

I'm surprised SYRIZA was so low, actually - lower than in the last legislative elections. Weren't they supposed to win about 30% ?

Maybe because of PASOK and Potami's relatively good performance (yep I know, PASOK lost big, but still an improvement!)

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

PASOK did surprisingly well, all things considering.

You know what would be cool? Direct Presidential elections for the EU president. None of this stupid horse-trading and uncertainty.

Who knows, maybe we can bring in a European electoral collage. That's always fun to watch in the US.

[Tender Branson]

PASOK did surprisingly well, all things considering.

You know what would be cool? Direct Presidential elections for the EU president. None of this stupid horse-trading and uncertainty.

Who knows, maybe we can bring in a European electoral collage. That's always fun to watch in the US.

Brrr, no: Better a direct vote for President yeah, but not an electoral college.

Btw: The current system is more or less an electoral college, with the heads of state being the electoral college members who are theoretically not pledged to support the winner of the election.

[justfollowingtheelections]

PASOK did surprisingly well, all things considering.

You know what would be cool? Direct Presidential elections for the EU president. None of this stupid horse-trading and uncertainty.

Who knows, maybe we can bring in a European electoral collage. That's always fun to watch in the US.

I know some disagree here but I think interest in the elections would be a lot higher if people could vote for European parties.  Juncker for example says that he won the election which is funny because if you ask the average Fidesz voter in Hungary, they probably don't even know who Juncker is.
It would also be interesting if the top parties had more credible candidates.  Merkel vs Renzi would draw a lot more interest than Juncker vs Schulz.

[Cassius]

PASOK did surprisingly well, all things considering.

You know what would be cool? Direct Presidential elections for the EU president. None of this stupid horse-trading and uncertainty.

Who knows, maybe we can bring in a European electoral collage. That's always fun to watch in the US.

I know some disagree here but I think interest in the elections would be a lot higher if people could vote for European parties.  Juncker for example says that he won the election which is funny because if you ask the average Fidesz voter in Hungary, they probably don't even know who Juncker is.
It would also be interesting if the top parties had more credible candidates.  Merkel vs Renzi would draw a lot more interest than Juncker vs Schulz.

Yeah, but that would only ever happen if the position was actually, you know, worth running for. It will only become worth running for with the creation of a federal Europe, and such a development is neither popular nor feasible.

[neosmyrnian]

About the Greek elections, although SYRIZA was first, its vote percentage was a bit lower that the one it got in the legislative elections in June 2012 (26.89%). What is worrying, though, is the very strong performance of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, which came third. I might be wrong, but it seems that Golden Dawn is much further to the right than the National Front in France and Golden Dawn's performance must be taken much more seriously in Greece.

[EPG]

Interest would be a lot lower in European parties. People already hate their own national parties because they're out-of-touch; what would they think of parties based in Strasbourg?

[justfollowingtheelections]

The Animal Protection Party in Germany is joining GUE-NGL

[republicanbayer]

The Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt will not support Juncker.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm surprised SYRIZA was so low, actually - lower than in the last legislative elections. Weren't they supposed to win about 30% ?

Both SYRIZA and ND underperformed slightly. SYRIZA was at the low end of its range in the last week of polling, ND a couple of points below the low end. SYRIZA's margin of victory was 3.9%, about on par with expectations. Like windjammer and CrabCake said, Totally-Not-PASOK-Guys did a little better than it was supposed to, as did 'Other'.

DIMAR also underperformed but I don't know that anybody cares about DIMAR any more.

[EPG]

The margin between the Cope and Harkin for the last seat in Midlands-North-West, Ireland, will be a few hundred votes. Expect recount.

[justfollowingtheelections]

I tried to summarize the results based on what I have read here and on other websites regarding new parties and the groups they are joining and this is what I came up with.  Feel free to ask questions or make corrections:


If this is correct then Le Pen would be unable to form a group since she needs partners from 6 other countries and so far she only seems to have 5.