European Parliament elections, June 2024

[Mike88]

During a debate yesterday on RTP, CHEGA's main candidate, António Tânger Corrêa, said that the AfD position and Le Pen's withdrawal of support to AfD, is a "game changer", and that CHEGA could leave ID and join ECR after the elections.

However, not sure if this can be taken seriously as Tânger Corrêa is a "trainwreck" of a candidate, so much so that his face isn't even in CHEGA's campaign posters, plus Ventura hasn't reacted yet to this whole controversy.

Also, a new poll was published, but a very weird one:
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1793338027940380831

[President Johnson]

The most "interesting" issue in the last hours about the EP election are the internal movements within the far-right ID group, Le Pen and Salvini (and joined today by czech SPD' Okamura) have broke-up with AfD after his lead candidate Maximilian Krah did say on a interview: "I will never say that anyone who whore a SS uniform was automatically a criminal", Krah has already resigned from the AfD leadership and stopped his campaign (still remains as a "electable" candidate for now).
https://twitter.com/ElectsWorld/status/1793236863659975156

Tomorrow is the Eurovision Debate in the Brussels' EP hemicycle. Attending the spitzenkandidats from EPP (von der Leyen), PES (Nicolas Schmit), Renew (EDP's renziani-macronista Sandro Gozi), EGP (Terry Reintke of the German Greens) and PEL (Walter Baier from the Austrian KPO). The conservative far-right is missing due to neither ECR and ID did not nominate any "spitzenkandidat".

On Election Twitter seems to be kind of popular this voting advice site EU&I, 30 questions and may give your likely preference in all 27 countries (plus the 3 Belgian linguistic constituencies): https://euandi.eu/

It's actually good news for the other parties that Krah formally remains on ballot as top candidate. So he continues to be a drag on his party.

[Zinneke]

I was looking at the French arena and I just realised the high priest of anti-vaxx, conspiracy crankery Francis ing Lalanne is again running a list in France with notorious anti-Semite Dieudonné...

There's also some other hilarious lists and even the bigger parties have gone for bizarre list names.

Nice link in french of a rundown of the lists and the heads of list :

https://www.touteleurope.eu/institutions/elections-europeennes-2024-voici-les-candidats-tetes-de-liste-en-france/

[MRCVzla]

AfD has just been expelled from the ID group caucus. Effective immediately.

They currently have 9 MEPs with 15-17 projected seats according to many Polling aggregators' predictions.

https://twitter.com/IDGroupEP/status/1793656087603761431

[Logical]

FPÖ was the only party to oppose AFD's expulsion. Nazis gotta stick together I guess.

[Flyersfan232]

Any hope for Bündnis Deutschland

[FredLindq]

Could Afd create a new EP-group? FPÖ voted against the exculusion of Afd from ID and EKRE in Estonia wanted Afd to stay and its leader to be expelled. These three parties and Verz. from Bulgaria, som members from Lativa, Greece, Croatia and maybe Rec from France could form a new group. Minimum seven countries and 23 seats. This group could have over 30 seats

[Storr]

Unsurprisingly, putting a 23 year old as your lead candidate for the EU elections has not gone well for  Austria's Green Party:

"The “Schilling affair,” as Austrian newspapers have dubbed it, began in early May when local media published a series of reports casting doubt on the former activist’s suitability for the role. Although tabloids happily jumped on the story, much of the reporting was led by Der Standard, a sober broadsheet.

In its article kicking off the media storm, Der Standard portrayed Schilling as having “a problematic relationship with the truth,” with multiple anonymous sources accusing her of spreading damaging rumors about friends, allies and journalists.

The report’s key piece of evidence: A cease-and-desist order, signed by Schilling, that stated the politician faced a €20,000 fine if she repeated false claims that a former friend’s husband had been violent to the point of causing his wife to have a miscarriage.

Schilling says she had simply been concerned for her friend, and shared her worries with her close circle. “That was passed on … I apologized. I wanted to clarify that this should never [have] become public, so I agreed to sign a settlement,” which “was leaked by other people.”

Last week, Der Standard published another bombshell: Based on text messages and an affidavit, the newspaper reported that Schilling had allegedly discussed ditching the Greens after getting elected to the European Parliament to join the far-left faction instead. "

...

"What followed was a crisis communications disaster of epic proportions. The Greens — who currently govern Austria in an uneasy coalition with the conservatives — initially dismissed the reports, prompting an outcry.

Green Vice Chancellor Walter Kogler denounced the allegations as “anonymous grumbles and farts.” He later apologized for the crude expression."

...

"After the second set of leaked chats that cast doubt on her Greens loyalty, the party switched to counterattack mode. The allegations, senior party members suggested, were part of a sinister conspiracy against Schilling, spread by other left-wing politicians.

In a press conference widely described as a PR debacle, Greens Secretary-General Olga Voglauer used a term seen as having antisemitic connotations while implying that the Social Democrats were involved in spreading the allegations. Voglauer was forced to apologize, but her comment had already sent the Greens’ campaign spiraling."

[Zinneke]

More arrests being made in far right MEP assistant homes over suspicion of Russian interference. Rumours are it's an AfD assistant.

[DavidB.]

In the Netherlands, polling has been quite constant - almost suspiciously so, because with low turnout a lot can happen. The PVV is still riding high at around 30% in polls for the next national election, about twice the level of GL-PvdA, but eurosceptic voters tend to turn out at a significantly lower rate in EP elections. The question is whether it will be the same this year, given the increasingly visible way in which EU decisions affect the Netherlands.

Yesterday, Ipsos-I&O published a poll for the EP election which is completely in line with previous polling. Compared to 2019 (the post-Brexit calculation); the Netherlands has gained 2 seats to a total of 31 in 2024:

PVV 9 (+8)
GL-PvdA 8 (-1)
VVD 5 (=)
D66 2 (=)
Volt 2 (+2)
CDA 2 (=)
NSC 1 (+1)
BBB 1 (+1)
SP 1 (+1)
FVD 0 (-4)
PvdD 0 (-1)
SGP 0 (-1)
CU 0 (-1)
50Plus 0 (-1)
All others 0

Ipsos-I&O assumes a turnout rate similar to last time, of about 40%. NSC, BBB, SP, FVD, PvdD, SGP and CU are all very close to the 3.22% threshold. The PVV would profit from higher turnout than expected (50%) and could go to 10 in that case, NSC would profit from lower turnout (30%) than expected (older, former CDA voters who turn out more reliably) and could go to 2 in that case.

Potential upsets would be GL-PvdA ending up as biggest party, bigger than PVV (but this seems unlikely and increasingly so, especially without the Timmermans effect of last time, with left-wingers demoralized due to national politics, and with Volt as energetic competitor) or one out of NSC or BBB not getting in. I also would not rule out at all that the final result is considerably different from the polls. For now, there doesn't seem to be much of any campaign dynamic at all: all eyes are at the formation process of the new PVV-VVD-NSC-BBB government, which is in its final stage.

In Amsterdam, the city's statistical agency always conducts a poll before the election, which shows GL-PvdA lose 12% compared to last time (when they ran separately). But they face more competition from Volt here than in most other places.

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1796148522980417640

[Mike88]

The campaign in Portugal has been very dull and almost a minor event so far, with the main topic of discussion being the "cheap shots" between AD and PS. The most recent was because of Von der Leyen's visit to Portugal next week.

One party that has been criticized by pundits is Livre. Livre's candidate, Francisco Paupério, is campaigning alone and the national leader, Rui Tavares, has not been present in campaign events, which is raising criticisms towards Tavares. The "problems" started during the primaries: Livre has an open primary system to elect their candidates and as Paupério wasn't Tavares' preferred candidate, in the 2nd round of these primaries, with Paupério seen as the clear favourite, Tavares wanted to end the open primary system and impose a close system in which only party members would be allowed to vote. This created a lot of backlash, the idea was dropped and Paupério won the primaries against Tavares' candidate.

[Diouf]

In Denmark, it has been a quiet campaign so far, and there is speculation that the turnout could get be quite low. In 2019 it was all the way up at 66.08% as it was only a few days before the general election. Some political scientists predict that we could get all the way down towards the 2004 turnout which was 47.89%.
The significant debates has not happened yet. On Tuesday there will be a debate between party leaders, and then Thursday there will be the debate between EU election lead candidates. And then the election is on Sunday.

There has been some but not a lot of polling yet. The latest Megafon poll actually showed, as I had teased might happen, SPP as the largest party, just ahead of the Social Democrats. But all other polls have still had Social Democrats at least 4-5% bigger than SPP at around 21%. For the three parties running on their own, Red-Green Alliance, Denmark Democrats and DPP, it looks like their threshold for a seat will be slightly below 6%. Red-Greens are mostly quite stable in polls at around 6-7%, while DD and DPP results fluctuate more wildly between just below the treshold and being close to 10%. A recent poll had half of all likely voters as still in doubt, and a third was hard doubters ( no choice even when pushed). So there could be some big late changes.

Currently it looks like this

Centre-left alliance
Social Democrats 19.2%
SPP 15.1%
Alternative 1.7%

This alliance will get at least five seats. And on these figures they will just get the 15th and last Danish seat, so they are on six overall. As previously written, I think there's a chance that SPP could get close to or even bigger than Social Democrats. Alternative won't get near seats, so the distribution is likely to be 3-3 between the two big parties if the alliance ends up on 6, and 3-2 to the largest of them if they end up with 5.

Renew Alliance
Liberals 13.0%
Moderates 5.1%
Social Liberals 4.9%

The alliance will get at least three seats. Currently they are just about not getting a 4th seat. Liberals are holding on surprisingly well so far, so on these numbers the party would actually take the two first seats in the alliance, as their second divisor is 6.5%. Then it's a close battle between the two smaller, most clearly pro-EU parties about the last seat. If they do get the fourth seat, they would likely get one each and all parties in the alliance would get a satisfying outcome.

Centre-right alliance
Liberal Alliance 11.0%
Conservatives 7.1%

The alliance will get at least two seats. On current polls they also get a third as the 14th and second-to last Danish seat. Liberal Alliance is not hitting the heights of general election polls, and the Conservatives are doing a bit better than there. So currently it's quite clear a seat for each, and then a second seat for LA if they end on three.

Denmark Democrats 8.5%
DPP 7.6%
Red-Green Alliance 6.6%

On current polls they all three get a seat. But as written above polls are quite divided on the two top parties with some having them without a seat or very close to that.

[Mike88]

Portugal poll, from Aximage to JN/DN newspapers and TSF radio:

Vote share %:

30.6% PS (-0.7)
26.6% PSD/CDS/PPM (+1.8 )
15.5% CHEGA (-2.9)
  7.5% IL (+1.7)
  6.3% BE (+0.4)
  5.2% Livre (+1.6)
  3.5% CDU (-0.6)
  1.6% PAN (-0.2)
  3.2% Others/Invalid (-0.9)

55.3% Turnout (-2.7)

Poll conducted bewteen 17 and 22 May 2024. Polled 801 votes. MoE of 3.50%.

[Zinneke]

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/europeennes/video-europeennes-2024-quand-gabriel-attal-s-invite-dans-une-interview-de-valerie-hayer-pour-soutenir-la-tete-de-liste-renaissance_6581865.html

Attal, the French PM, is going Full Chirac (who used to barge into interviews with his protégés and defend them from the journalists). It's panic mode at Renaissance because it looks like their chief candidate Hayer is bombing.

Also a nice link from Euronews projecting some seat distributions :

https://www.euronews.com/2024/06/01/super-poll-qa-is-the-eu-conservative-coalition-loosing-momentum

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Unsurprisingly, putting a 23 year old as your lead candidate for the EU elections has not gone well for  Austria's Green Party:

"The “Schilling affair,” as Austrian newspapers have dubbed it, began in early May when local media published a series of reports casting doubt on the former activist’s suitability for the role. Although tabloids happily jumped on the story, much of the reporting was led by Der Standard, a sober broadsheet.

In its article kicking off the media storm, Der Standard portrayed Schilling as having “a problematic relationship with the truth,” with multiple anonymous sources accusing her of spreading damaging rumors about friends, allies and journalists.

The report’s key piece of evidence: A cease-and-desist order, signed by Schilling, that stated the politician faced a €20,000 fine if she repeated false claims that a former friend’s husband had been violent to the point of causing his wife to have a miscarriage.

Schilling says she had simply been concerned for her friend, and shared her worries with her close circle. “That was passed on … I apologized. I wanted to clarify that this should never [have] become public, so I agreed to sign a settlement,” which “was leaked by other people.”

Last week, Der Standard published another bombshell: Based on text messages and an affidavit, the newspaper reported that Schilling had allegedly discussed ditching the Greens after getting elected to the European Parliament to join the far-left faction instead. "

...

"What followed was a crisis communications disaster of epic proportions. The Greens — who currently govern Austria in an uneasy coalition with the conservatives — initially dismissed the reports, prompting an outcry.

Green Vice Chancellor Walter Kogler denounced the allegations as “anonymous grumbles and farts.” He later apologized for the crude expression."

...

"After the second set of leaked chats that cast doubt on her Greens loyalty, the party switched to counterattack mode. The allegations, senior party members suggested, were part of a sinister conspiracy against Schilling, spread by other left-wing politicians.

In a press conference widely described as a PR debacle, Greens Secretary-General Olga Voglauer used a term seen as having antisemitic connotations while implying that the Social Democrats were involved in spreading the allegations. Voglauer was forced to apologize, but her comment had already sent the Greens’ campaign spiraling."

Seems more like a proof of how discrimination by age and gender is still a thing.

"Choosing a young woman to head your list backfired"... yeah i don't think that's the issue to be honest.

It's misogynism and the gerontocratic nature of our democracy.

[Storr]

"The first votes have been cast in the European Parliament election.

The official election dates are June 6 to 9, with most countries going to the polls on Sunday (June 9). But Estonia has a three-day head start, with voting allowed starting Monday — from 9 a.m. online and from midday in person."

"By 4.45 p.m., more than 18,000 votes had been cast: more than 12,700 online and almost 6,000 on paper."

[DavidB.]

In Denmark, it has been a quiet campaign so far, and there is speculation that the turnout could get be quite low. In 2019 it was all the way up at 66.08% as it was only a few days before the general election. Some political scientists predict that we could get all the way down towards the 2004 turnout which was 47.89%.

Dutch pollster Maurice de Hond (of Peil.nl) is also suggesting turnout in the Netherlands could be at the lowest level of this century, around 35%.

https://twitter.com/mauricedehond/status/1797182035909374097

[LAKISYLVANIA]

The problem with that is that our vote in Belgium isn't worth anything, because basically we have ridicilous high turnout, will almost certainly have more or even twice as many votes cast in the Netherlands but for less seats due to mandatory voting.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/hichembkhh/status/1797728947037483121?s=46&t=-IsNWMXUlcE...


Jordan Bardella attacked on the fact that he's submitted a grand total of 21 amendments as an MEP last term.

[Storr]

Hungary having an election that's anywhere remotely close to being competitive? I guess cows do fly after all. 45% would be Fidesz/KDNP's worst ever EP election result. 2004 is the current low, where they received 47.40% of the vote.

"Hungary, Závecz poll:

European Parliament election

Fidesz/KDNP-NI|EPP: 45% (+6) 11 MEP (-2)
TISZA→EPP: 27% (+1) 7 MEP (+7)
DK/MSZP/P-S&D-G/EFA: 11% (-6) 2 MEP (-3)
MH~NI: 5% (-1) 1 MEP (+1)
Momentum-RE: 4% 0 MEP (-2)
MKKP→G/EFA: 3%
LMP-G/EFA: 2% (+1)
MMN→EPP: 1% (-1)
2RK-*: 1%
Jobbik-NI: 1% 0 MEP (-1)

+/- vs. 2-10 May 2024 [MEPs vs. 2019 EP election]

Fieldwork: 24 May - 2 June 2024
Sample size: 1,000
➤ https://europeelects.eu/hungary"

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Hungary having an election that's anywhere remotely close to being competitive? I guess cows do fly after all. 45% would be Fidesz/KDNP's worst ever EP election result. 2004 is the current low, where they received 47.40% of the vote.

"Hungary, Závecz poll:

European Parliament election

Fidesz/KDNP-NI|EPP: 45% (+6) 11 MEP (-2)
TISZA→EPP: 27% (+1) 7 MEP (+7)
DK/MSZP/P-S&D-G/EFA: 11% (-6) 2 MEP (-3)
MH~NI: 5% (-1) 1 MEP (+1)
Momentum-RE: 4% 0 MEP (-2)
MKKP→G/EFA: 3%
LMP-G/EFA: 2% (+1)
MMN→EPP: 1% (-1)
2RK-*: 1%
Jobbik-NI: 1% 0 MEP (-1)

+/- vs. 2-10 May 2024 [MEPs vs. 2019 EP election]

Fieldwork: 24 May - 2 June 2024
Sample size: 1,000
➤ https://europeelects.eu/hungary"

This isn't too far off from what Fidesz polls in National Assembly elections.

[Pericles]

To me, this Peter Magyar figure strikes me as a Hungarian version of Emmanuel Macron. A young, charismatic outsider who is actually an insider comes out of nowhere, avoids the left-right divide, appeals most to liberal people but doesn't seem left-wing themselves.

Of course it's very early and Hungary is an electoral autocracy so there would need to be a huge groundswell for change to even have a hope of overthrowing the Orban regime, but I wonder if this first impression of mine makes sense.

[DavidB.]

The Dutch EP vote will take place tomorrow. Most polling stations will be open from 7:30 until 21:00. Some open earlier, none close later. Preliminary results will only be announced on Sunday in order not to affect the vote in the other member states. Those won't be the full results, because postal ballots from the diaspora are still being counted then. However, the count at each polling station tomorrow evening is a public event and at the end the results of every specific polling station will be announced to those who decided to attend the counting process. Therefore, pollster Maurice de Hond will once again send people to a representative sample of polling stations and go live in the evening, making a prognosis. This means we will have a rather good picture of the results tomorrow evening, although a few seats may still change hands. The NOS will also present an exit poll at 21:00.

I have the feeling there was never a proper campaign in the Netherlands and awareness about the elections is low. The final Ipsos-I&O poll has PVV and GL-PvdA neck and neck, suggesting low turnout, which disproportionately hurts the PVV and benefits parties that rely more on higher propensity voters: academically educated voters (GL-PvdA, D66, Volt) and older voters (NSC, CDA).

The poll (compared to post-Brexit 2019 result):
PVV 8 (+7)
GL-PvdA 8 (-1)
VVD 5 (=)
CDA 2 (-2)
D66 2 (=)
NSC 2 (+2)
PvdD 1 (=)
SP 1 (+1)
Volt 1 (+1)
BBB 1 (+1)
--
FVD 0 (-4)
50Plus 0 (-1)
CU 0 (-1)
SGP 0 (-1)
All others 0

[Diouf]

An interesting and fairly fierce party leader debate in Denmark.
Mette Frederiksen can probably feel the SPP's breath down her neck, and went quite hard against SPP's Olsen Dyhr, who dithered on the question of whether Denmark should join the refugee distribution mechanism (as the party's lead candidate has said they should). Lars Løkke Rasmussen brought a prop, a straw, which he used to attack Liberal Alliance and DPP for 'unserious campaigns' when focusing on EU's regulation of plastic straws instead of big issues as war, climate and migration.
Inger Støjberg delicatedly used the wedge in the Liberals on the climate question, when she cited Liberal MEP and farm Asger Christensen as being an example of a very efficient and climate friendly Danish farm, who already emits far less carbon per kg meat compared to many other countries, where the Danish cattle could move with a carbon tax on farming.
Feels like this was only really when the campaign started. Denmark doesn't vote until Sunday, so interesting if we will start getting some more movement in polls now, or whether it might even come to late for pollsters to really catch up.

[JimJamUK]

An interesting and fairly fierce party leader debate in Denmark.
Mette Frederiksen can probably feel the SPP's breath down her neck, and went quite hard against SPP's Olsen Dyhr, who dithered on the question of whether Denmark should join the refugee distribution mechanism (as the party's lead candidate has said they should). Lars Løkke Rasmussen brought a prop, a straw, which he used to attack Liberal Alliance and DPP for 'unserious campaigns' when focusing on EU's regulation of plastic straws instead of big issues as war, climate and migration.

They are of course in an electoral alliance for this election…