European Parliament seat projection (October 2022): S&D and Greens fall back, as right-wing parties gain ground

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	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	ID	NI	other
EP today	38	72	145	103	177	63	65	42	–
Aug. 22	52	47	134	98	170	75	63	27	39
Oct. 22	52	42	127	100	169	79	63	35	38
dynamic	54	48	130	108	174	84	80	27	–

Baseline scenario,
as of 12/10/2022.

Dynamic scenario,
as of 12/10/2022.

Europe’s electoral autumn of 2022 has had an intense start: Between September 11 and October 2, new national parliaments were elected in four EU member states. The elections in Sweden and Italy were certainly the most hotly debated across Europe, with far-right parties emerging significantly stronger in each case. Shifts in the national party system were particularly drastic in Latvia, where the four parties that had been the strongest up to that point were all thrown out of parliament. In Bulgaria, on the other hand, it was the fourth election in just two years, and it again ended in a political stalemate, so that there is already speculation about the next new elections. And then, at the beginning of October, also the Danish government announced an early parliamentary election, which will take place on November 1.

EPP extends its lead

Of course, all these developments also affected the seat projection at the European level. The main impact resulted from the electoral successes of the right-wing parties and the rather weak result of the Italian PD (S&D). Compared to the last projection from August 2022, the right-wing ECR group performs better, while the social democratic S&D suffers significant losses.

Since at the same time the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is holding fairly steady, the S&D’s is now over 40 seats behind in the projection – significantly more than in the current Parliament (32). While an exciting race between the two largest groups had been on the horizon for the 2024 European elections just a few months ago, the EPP now has much better prospects of coming in first again. This also makes a possible second term for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen more likely. But of course it is still more than a year and a half to go before the European elections in 2024, and many things may happen in that time.

S&D loses significantly

Looking at the polls in detail, the last few weeks have not been too good for the EPP either. It has made gains in Portugal, where it has now overcome the polling low that followed its defeat at the parliamentary elections at the beginning of the year. In addition, in Poland the small KP is now slightly above the national five-percent threshold again. In several other countries, however, the EPP’s poll numbers have stagnated or declined slightly, leaving the group with a total of 169 seats (–1 compared to the August projection).

Nevertheless, the situation looks much bleaker for the S&D. The Italian PD had initially made some gains during the national election campaign, but then lost much support in the final pre-election polls and the first post-election surveys. The Social Democrats also suffered slight losses in Portugal and Poland. In Latvia, the S&D member party SDPS, which has traditionally been supported by many members of the Russian minority, fell out over its course toward Ukraine, lost more than three-quarters of its voters in the election at the beginning of October and was ousted from the national parliament. The only countries were S&D made slight gains were Spain and Malta. In total, the group would now have 127 seats (–7).

Mixed results for the liberals

For the European liberals, whose Renew Europe (RE) group is the third strongest in the European Parliament, recent polling developments have been mixed. The centrist A/IV alliance did somewhat better than expected in the Italian election. But in Latvia, the AP! party, previously part of the national government coalition, narrowly failed to clear the five-percent threshold in the election, and liberals’ polls in Portugal and Denmark have also deteriorated recently.

The fact that RE is nevertheless able to make slight gains (100 seats/+2) is due to the Slovenian governing party GS, which – after merging with RE member LMŠ – now appears as part of the RE also in the baseline version of the projection.

Green losses

The Greens/EFA parliamentary group performs significantly worse than in the August projection. After the Greens had made significant gains in Germany and the Czech Republic in the summer, they are now falling back again in the polls in precisely these countries. All in all, the Greens are now at 42 seats (–5), losing a large part of their gains of the past six months.

As usual, there are only minimal changes in the Left group. Slight gains in Germany are offset by a somewhat weaker performance than expected in Sweden. Overall, the Left remains at 52 seats (±0).

ECR successful with Meloni

On the right side of the political spectrum, the European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) are making gains. Both Italy’s FdI and Sweden’s SD performed better than expected in the national elections, and Romania’s AUR made gains in the polls, too. For Spain’s Vox, the last few weeks have been less successful. Nonetheless, the ECR as a whole reach a new record high of 79 seats (+4), the best they have ever achieved in the baseline variant of the seat projection.

With their latest polling gains, the FdI would also clearly overtake Poland’s PiS as the strongest national party within the ECR group. This will likely contribute to reinforce new Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s leadership position within the European right.

ID: Lega loses, others gain

The FdI’s successes have come mainly at the expense of Italy’s other right-wing party: Matteo Salvini’s Lega fell well short of expectations in the national election and dropped even further in the first post-election polls. Within the far-right ID group, the Lega would now only be the third strongest force behind Marine Le Pen’s RN from France and the German AfD, which for its part has surged in the polls in recent weeks.

Similarly, the Dutch PVV, the Austrian FPÖ and the Estonian EKRE have also improved their poll ratings. However, all of this only offsets the Lega’s losses to the extent that the ID group as a whole remains at 63 seats (±0).

NI: M5S makes up ground

Finally, another winner of the recent weeks has been the Italian M5S. Although it suffered heavy losses in the national parliamentary election, it was able to make up some ground during the final phase of the electoral campaign and in the first post-electoral polls. The M5S is therefore now performing significantly better than in the August projection.

The Hungarian governing party Fidesz – which, like the M5S, does not belong to any political group in the European Parliament – also made slight gains. Overall, the non-attached parties (NI) are now at 35 seats (+8).

Other parties: Newcomers from Denmark, Latvia and Bulgaria

Finally, there is also some news among the “other” parties, which are not represented in the European Parliament so far and cannot be clearly attributed to any political group.

• The Danish Moderaterne (M), founded just a few months ago by former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, are appearing in the seat projection for the first time. Rasmussen was head of the right-wing liberal Venstre (RE) until 2019, but left in 2021 because the party did not want to follow his proposal for a grand coalition with the social democrats. Moderaterne now want to be a centrist party that after the upcoming election in November could serve as a hinge to bring about such a grand coalition after all. At the European level, their greatest affinities are with RE.

• Another newcomer is the Latvian populist party Stabilitātei! (S!), which was founded in 2021 and whose programme includes abolishing all Corona restrictions and leaving the EU. With its demand for Russian-language school instruction, it also addresses the Russian minority in the country and was able to reach many former voters of the S&D member party SDPS. Should S! Enter the European Parliament in 2024, this combination of closeness to Russia and Euroskepticism is most likely to place it in the ID group, if it does not remain completely independent.

• Finally, in Bulgaria, the national populist party BV, which was founded only in May, was able to enter the national parliament at the election in early October. BV has few clear political positions and ran in the national election in a heterogeneous alliance with nationalist, social democratic and green parties. But it, too, presents itself as both Euroskeptic and Putin-friendly and would thus be most likely to be welcomed in the ID group.

The Slovenian GS is now attributed to RE in the projection and has therefore been removed from the group of ”other” parties. As a result, the overall number of “other” seats falls slightly to 38 (–1).

The overview

The following table breaks down the distribution of seats in the projection by individual national parties. The table follows the baseline scenario, in which national parties are each attributed to their current parliamentary group (or to the parliamentary group of their European political party) and parties without a clear attribution are labelled as “others”.

In contrast, the dynamic scenario of the seat projection assigns all “other” parties to the respective parliamentary group to which they are politically closest, and also includes possible other future group changes of individual national parties. In the table, the changes in the dynamic scenario compared with the baseline scenario are indicated by coloured font and by a note mouseover text.

In the absence of pan-European electoral polls, the projection is based on an aggregation of national polls and election results from all member states. The specific data basis for each country is explained in the small print below the table. More information on the European parties and the political groups in the European Parliament can be found here.

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	ID	NI	other
EP today	38	72	145	103	177	63	65	42	–
Aug. 22	52	47	134	98	170	75	63	27	39
Oct. 22	52	42	127	100	169	79	63	35	38
dynamic	54	48	130	108	174	84	80	27	–
	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	ID	NI	other
DE	5 Linke	19 Grüne 1 Piraten 1 ÖDP 1 Volt	17 SPD	7 FDP 2 FW	26 Union 1 Familie		13 AfD	2 Partei	1 Tier
FR	15 LFI	5 EELV		27 Ens	12 LR		20 RN
IT			16 PD	7 Az-IV	7 FI 1 SVP	23 FdI	7 Lega	15 M5S
ES	7 UP 1 Bildu	1 ERC	16 PSOE	1 Cʼs 1 PNV	20 PP	10 Vox		1 JxC	1 MP
PL			4 Lewica	6 PL2050	16 KO 3 KP	20 PiS			3 Konf
RO			14 PSD	3 USR	8 PNL 2 UDMR	6 AUR
NL	2 PvdD 1 SP	2 GL	3 PvdA	5 VVD 3 D66	1 CDA 1 CU	2 JA21 1 SGP	4 PVV		4 BBB
EL	6 Syriza		3 PASOK		8 ND	1 EL		2 KKE	1 MeRA25
BE	3 PTB	1 Groen 1 Ecolo	2 Vooruit 2 PS	1 O-VLD 2 MR	1 CD&V 1 LE 1 CSP	3 N-VA	3 VB
PT	1 BE		9 PS	1 IL	8 PSD		2 CH
CZ		2 Piráti		8 ANO	2 STAN 1 KDU-ČSL	5 ODS	3 SPD
HU			4 DK	1 MM	1 KDNP			12 Fidesz	2 MHM
SE	1 V	1 MP	7 S	1 C 1 L	4 M 1 KD	5 SD
AT		2 Grüne	6 SPÖ	2 Neos	4 ÖVP		5 FPÖ
BG			2 BSP	2 DPS	5 GERB 1 DSB				4 PP 2 V 1 BV
DK	1 Enhl.	1 SF	5 S	2 V	2 K				2 DD 1 M
FI	1 Vas	1 Vihreät	3 SDP	2 Kesk	4 Kok		3 PS
SK			3 Smer-SSD	1 PS	1 OĽANO 1 Spolu 1 KDH	2 SaS	1 SR	1 REP	3 Hlas-SD
IE	6 SF			3 FF	4 FG
HR			3 SDP		5 HDZ				2 Možemo 1 Most 1 DP
LT		1 LVŽS	2 LSDP	1 LRLS 1 LP	2 TS-LKD			1 DP	2 DSVL 1 LT
LV					2 JV	1 NA			2 ZZS 1 Prog 1 LRA 1 S!
SI				4 GS	3 SDS 1 N.Si
EE				3 RE 1 KE			2 EKRE		1 E200
CY	2 AKEL		1 EDEK		3 DISY
LU		1 Gréng 1 PPLU	1 LSAP	1 DP	2 CSV
MT			4 PL		2 PN

Development (baseline scenario)

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	ID	NI	other
12/10/2022	52	42	127	100	169	79	63	35	38
20/08/2022	52	47	134	98	170	75	63	27	39
22/06/2022	54	44	133	101	165	77	64	31	36
25/04/2022	59	39	139	97	157	78	64	38	34
01/03/2022	53	36	139	98	158	78	62	45	36
04/01/2022	51	39	142	99	165	73	62	34	40
08/11/2021	50	42	144	96	155	75	72	36	35
13/09/2021	54	42	141	98	160	70	75	33	32
21/07/2021	52	45	133	97	167	71	74	31	35
24/05/2021	50	50	125	95	167	74	73	33	38
29/03/2021	52	46	136	96	164	71	73	34	33
02/02/2021	52	45	135	94	184	70	71	21	33
09/12/2020	52	47	136	93	188	67	73	20	29
12/10/2020	51	49	127	96	193	67	71	21	30
14/08/2020	50	53	145	88	196	65	64	20	24
25/06/2020	48	55	143	91	203	64	63	20	18
26/04/2020	47	53	151	88	202	66	66	19	13
10/03/2020	51	58	138	88	188	67	82	21	12
09/01/2020	49	58	135	93	186	65	82	24	13
23/11/2019	48	57	138	99	181	62	82	22	16
23/09/2019	49	61	139	108	175	56	82	24	11
30/07/2019	47	64	138	108	180	57	82	22	7
EP 2019	40	68	148	97	187	62	76	27	–

The “EP 2019” line indicates the distribution of seats as of July 2, 2019, when the European Parliament was constituted following the election in May 2019.
The table shows the values of the baseline scenario without the United Kingdom. An overview of the values including the United Kingdom for the period up to January 2020 can be found here. An overview of older projections from the 2014-2019 electoral period is here.

The full names of the parliamentary groups and of the national parties appear as mouseover text when the mouse pointer is held motionless on the designation in the table for a short time. If a party is attributed to a different parliamentary group in the dynamic scenario than in the baseline scenario, this is also indicated in the mouseover text.

Attribution of national parties to parliamentary groups

Baseline scenario: For the projection, parties that are already represented in the European Parliament are assigned to their current parliamentary group, unless they have explicitly declared that they will change group after the next European election. National parties that are not currently represented in the European Parliament, but belong to a European political party, are attributed to the parliamentary group of that party. In cases where the members of a national electoral list are expected to split up and join different political groups after the election, the projection uses the allocation that seems most plausible in each case (see below). Parties for which the allocation to a specific parliamentary group is unclear are classified as “others” in the baseline scenario.

According to the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament, at least 23 MEPs from at least a quarter of the member states are required to form a parliamentary group. Groupings marked with an asterisk (*) would not currently meet these conditions according to the projection. They would therefore have to win over additional MEPs after the European elections in order to be able to constitute themselves as a parliamentary group.

Dynamic scenario: In the dynamic scenario, all “other” parties are assigned to an already existing parliamentary group (or to the group of non-attached members). In addition, the dynamic scenario also takes into account other group changes that appear politically plausible, even if the respective parties have not yet been publicly announced them. To highlight these changes from the baseline scenario, parties that are assigned to a different parliamentary group in the dynamic scenario are marked in the table with the colour of that group; moreover, the name of the group appears in the mouseover text. The attributions in the dynamic scenario are based on a subjective assessment of the political orientation and strategy of the parties and can therefore be quite uncertain in detail. From an overall perspective, however, the dynamic scenario may be closer to the real distribution of seats after the next European election than the baseline scenario.

Data source

If available, the most recent poll of voting intentions for the European Parliament is used to calculate the seat distribution for each country. In case that more than one poll has been published, the average of all polls from the two weeks preceding the most recent poll is calculated, taking into account only the most recent poll from each polling institute. The cut-off date for taking a survey into account is the last day of its fieldwork, if known, otherwise the day of its publication.
For countries where there are no specific European election polls or where the last such poll was taken more than a fortnight ago, the most recent poll available for the national parliamentary election or the average of all polls for the national or European Parliament from the two weeks preceding the most recent poll available is used instead. For countries where there are no recent polls for parliamentary elections, polls for presidential elections are used instead, where appropriate, with the polling figures for the presidential candidates assigned to the parties of the candidates (this may concern France in particular). For member states for which no recent polls can be found at all, the results of the last national or European elections are used.
As a rule, the national poll results of the parties are directly converted to the total number of seats in the country. For countries where the election is held in regional constituencies without proportional representation (currently Belgium and Ireland), regional polling data is used where available. Where this is not the case, the number of seats is still calculated for each constituency individually, but using the overall national polling data in each case. National electoral thresholds are taken into account in the projection where they exist.

In Belgium, constituencies in the European election correspond to language communities, while polls are usually conducted at the regional level. The projection uses polling data from Wallonia for the French-speaking community and polling data from Flanders for the Dutch-speaking community. For the German-speaking community, it uses the result of the last European election (1 seat for CSP).
In countries where it is common for several parties to run as an electoral alliance on a common list, the projection makes a plausibility assumption about the composition of these lists. In the table, such multi-party lists are usually grouped under the name of the electoral alliance or of its best-known member party. Sometimes, however, the parties of an electoral alliance split up after the election and join different political groups in the European Parliament. In this case, the parties are listed individually and a plausibility assumption is made about the exact distribution of seats on the joint list. This concerns the following parties: Italy: SI (place 1 and 3 on the list) and EV (2, 4); Spain: Más País (1-2), Compromís (3) and Equo (4); ERC (1, 3-4), Bildu (2) and BNG (5); PNV (1) and CC (2); Netherlands: CU (1, 3-4) and SGP (2, 5); Hungary: Fidesz (1-6, from 8) and KDNP (7); Bulgaria: DSB (1-2) and ZD (3); Slovakia: PS (1) and Spolu (2).
In France, several centre-left parties (LFI, PS, EELV, PCF) have joined forces to form the electoral alliance NUPES for the 2022 national parliamentary election. However, it is unlikely that this alliance will last in the next European election. In the projection, therefore, the poll ratings or electoral results of the alliance are divided among the individual parties according to the ratio of the average poll ratings of the parties in the most recent polls that showed them individually.
Since there is no electoral threshold for European elections in Germany, parties can win a seat in the European Parliament with less than 1 per cent of the vote. Since German polling institutes do not usually report values for very small parties, the projection includes them based on their results at the last European election (2 seats each for PARTEI and FW, 1 seat each for Tierschutzpartei, ödp, Piraten, Volt and Familienpartei). Only if a small party achieves a better value in current polls than in the last European election, the poll rating is used instead.
In Italy, a special rule makes it easier for minority parties to enter the European Parliament. In the projection, the Südtiroler Volkspartei is therefore always listed with its result at the last European election (1 seat).

The following overview lists the data source for each member state. The dates refer to the last day of the fieldwork; if this is not known, to the day of publication of the polls:
Germany: national polls, 30/9-12/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
France: national parliamentary election result, first round, 19/6/2022, source: Wikipedia; for the distribution among the member parties of the electoral alliance NUPES: national polls, 16/5/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Italy: national polls, 29/9-10/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Spain: national polls, 26/9-8/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Poland: national polls, 3-9/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Romania: national polls, 22/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Netherlands: national polls, 25-26/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Greece: national polls, 20-28/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, French-speaking community: regional polls (Wallonia) for the national parliamentary election, 13/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, Dutch-speaking community: regional polls (Flanders) for the national parliamentary election, 13/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, German-speaking community: European election result, 26/5/2019.
Portugal: national polls, 15-24/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Czech Republic: national polls, 30/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Hungary: national polls, 9-22/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Sweden: national parliamentary election results, 11/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Austria: national polls, 30/9-6/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Bulgaria: national parliamentary election results, 2/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Denmark: national polls, 5-11/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Finland: national polls, 4/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Slovakia: national polls, 14-27/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Ireland: national polls, 1/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Croatia: national polls, 20-26/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Lithuania: national polls, 2/9/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Latvia: national parliamentary election results, 1/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Slovenia: national polls, 6/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Estonia: national polls, 10/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Cyprus: national parliamentary election results, 30/5/2021, source: Wikipedia.
Luxembourg: national polls, 7/6/2021, source: Europe Elects.
Malta: national polls, 10/10/2022, source: Malta Today.

Translation: Yannik Uhlenkotte.
Images: All graphs: Manuel Müller.