European Parliament seat projection (December 2022): S&D make significant gains, Liberals fall back

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	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	ID	NI	other
EP today	38	71	146	102	176	63	64	45	–
Oct. 22	52	42	127	100	169	79	63	35	38
Dec. 22	51	44	136	93	166	79	64	37	35
dynamic	53	50	139	100	170	83	80	30	–

Baseline scenario,
as of 06/12/2022.

Dynamic scenario,
as of 06/12/2022.

If you are a regular follower of the European Parliament seat projections on this blog, you will already be familiar with the phenomenon: If there is a sudden jump in the projection, that’s usually because some dramatic political developments have taken place within an individual member state – or because a new survey has been published in France. As French politics is so strongly focused on the person of the president, there are hardly any polls that ask about party political preferences outside the campaign period for parliamentary elections. When one does appear, as has now happened in early November for the first time in almost half a year, it often shows significant changes in the political mood. And since France is one of the largest member states, this of course also has a direct impact at the European level.

In the current case, the new French poll pushes the centre-left S&D group, which makes strong gains compared to the last European Parliament seat projection in October. In the national parliamentary election in June, the French PS had dropped so low that it no longer appeared in the seat projection. By contrast, the recent poll sees the party clearly above the national electoral threshold, which would add a significant number of seats to the S&D group. On the other hand, the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Left are falling back both in France and in the European Parliament seat projection.

S&D make strong gains

Still, France is not the only country where social democrats have performed well in recent weeks. S&D member parties also made some inroads in Germany, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, and Lithuania.

Meanwhile, the Italian PD is still struggling over its future direction after being defeated in the national parliamentary election in September. Also in the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria and Croatia, social democratic parties suffered downturns in recent polls. Nevertheless, on balance the S&D have made significant gains and would now reach 136 seats (+9 compared to October).

EPP slightly down

The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) recently improved its polling in Germany and Croatia, among other countries. The Latvian EPP member JV, which won the national parliamentary election in early October, further increased its lead in the first poll published since then.

However, Italy’s FI continues to plummet after joining the right-wing government around Giorgia Meloni (FdI/ECR), and Spain’s PP appears to be paying an electoral price for its blockade of the renewal of the national judiciary body. The polling numbers of the French, Portuguese, and Danish EPP member parties also deteriorated in recent weeks. In total, the group is down to 166 seats (–3).

Liberals with significant losses

Even more significant is the downturn of the liberal Renew Europe group (RE). Its member parties are suffering setbacks not only in France, but also in Germany and Poland. The Swedish Liberalerna, whose support for the country’s new right-wing government has recently caused some trouble in the RE, wouldn’t even enter the European Parliament now.

The only RE member that has improved its polling during the last weeks is the Danish LA. Similar to other centrist parties, it performed very well in the national parliamentary election in early November and can now hope to win a seat in the European Parliament, too. But for the RE group as a whole, this is not enough. In the projection, the Liberals falls back to 93 seats (–7), their worst figure in two years.

Greens gaining ground

Further to the left of the political spectrum, the European Greens (who recently held their party congress in Copenhagen, which takes place only once per electoral period) are among the winners of the last weeks. Although their traditional powerhouse, the German Greens, is not making much headway, the French and Dutch Greens have improved their polling – as have the Czech Piráti, who are also members of the Greens/EFA group. Altogether, the group now stands at 44 seats (+2).

The Left, on the other hand, has suffered significant losses in the new French poll, but has made some inroads in several other countries, such as the Netherlands, Greece and Portugal. All in all, the group remains almost unchanged at 51 seats (–1).

ECR: FdI still on the rise

On the other side of the hemicycle, the Italian FdI are rising ever further within the right-wing ECR group. After their national election victory in September, the party of the new head of government, Giorgia Meloni, continues to soar in the polls and would now be the second strongest single national party in the European Parliament – ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s government alliance Ensemble (RE) and only minimally behind the German CDU/CSU (EPP). In Romania, Sweden and Slovakia, on the other hand, ECR member parties have been polling slightly worse in recent weeks, leaving the group as a whole unchanged at 79 seats (±0).

For the other right-wing group, ID, the last weeks have brought little news. While the Portuguese Chega and the Austrian FPÖ are making further inroads (the latter of them being the strongest national force in some polls now), the French RN does slightly worse in the new poll than in the national parliamentary election in June. Overall, the ID group therefore increases its number of seats only minimally to 64 (+1).

Non-attached and “other” parties

With RN struggling, Éric Zemmour’s far-right party Reconquête is making a small comeback in France. The party, which was founded only a year ago, seemed to be on the verge of collapse after it failed miserably in the national presidential election in April and the parliamentary election in June. However, according to the new poll, it would now again pass the national five-percent threshold by a minimal margin. If this result holds until the next European election, Reconquête is set to further fill the ranks of non-attached MEPs.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s Fidesz and Greece’s KKE fared somewhat worse in the latest polls. As a consequence, the overall number of non-attached MEPs increases only slightly in the projection (37 seats / +2).

Finally, the “other” parties (which are currently not represented in the European Parliament and cannot be clearly assigned to any political group) experience slight losses. Among them is the Dutch agrarian party BBB, which had grown rapidly in the course of the farmers’ protests this summer but seems to have passed its zenith by now. All in all, the “other” parties account for 35 seats (–3) in the projection.

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	71	146	102	176	63	64	45	–
Oct. 22	52	42	127	100	169	79	63	35	38
Dec. 22	51	44	136	93	166	79	64	37	35
dynamic	53	50	139	100	170	83	80	30	–
	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	ID	NI	other
DE	5 Linke	18 Grüne 1 Piraten 1 ÖDP 1 Volt	18 SPD	6 FDP 2 FW	27 Union 1 Familie		13 AfD	2 Partei	1 Tier
FR	10 LFI	6 EELV	7 PS	23 Ens	10 LR		19 RN	4 Rec
IT			14 PD	6 Az-IV	7 FI 1 SVP	26 FdI	7 Lega	15 M5S
ES	7 UP 1 Bildu	1 ERC	17 PSOE	1 Cʼs 1 PNV	19 PP	10 Vox		1 JxC	1 MP
PL			5 Lewica	5 PL2050	16 KO 3 KP	20 PiS			3 Konf
RO			14 PSD	3 USR	9 PNL 2 UDMR	5 AUR
NL	2 PvdD 2 SP	3 GL	2 PvdA	5 VVD 3 D66	1 CDA 1 CU	2 JA21 1 SGP	4 PVV		3 BBB
EL	7 Syriza		3 PASOK		8 ND	1 EL		1 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 1 CDU		8 PS	1 IL	7 PSD		3 CH
CZ		3 Piráti		8 ANO	1 STAN 1 TOP09	5 ODS	3 SPD
HU			4 DK 1 MSZP	1 MM	1 KDNP			12 Fidesz	2 MHM
SE	2 V	1 MP	8 S	1 C	4 M 1 KD	4 SD
AT		2 Grüne	5 SPÖ	2 Neos	4 ÖVP		6 FPÖ
BG			2 BSP	2 DPS	5 GERB 1 DSB				4 PP 2 V 1 BV
DK	1 Enhl.	1 SF	6 S	2 V 1 LA	1 K				1 DD 1 M
FI	1 Vas	1 Vihreät	3 SDP	2 Kesk	4 Kok		3 PS
SK			3 Smer-SSD	1 PS	2 OĽANO 1 Spolu 1 KDH	1 SaS	1 SR	1 REP	3 Hlas-SD
IE	6 SF			3 FF	4 FG
HR			2 SDP		6 HDZ				2 Možemo 1 Most 1 DP
LT		1 LVŽS	3 LSDP	1 LRLS	2 TS-LKD			1 DP	2 DSVL 1 LT
LV					3 JV	1 NA			1 ZZS 1 Prog 1 LRA 1 S!
SI			1 SD	4 GS	2 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
06/12/2022	51	44	136	93	166	79	64	37	35
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).

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, 24/11-3/12/2022, source: Wikipedia.
France: national polls, 4/11/2022, source: Europe Elects.
Italy: national polls, 21/11-5/12/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Spain: national polls, 20/11-2/12/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Poleand: national polls, 21/11-4/12/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Romania: national polls, 22/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Netherlands: national polls, 14-28/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Greece: national polls, 12-22/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, French-speaking community: regional polls (Wallonia) for the national parliamentary election, 29/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, Dutch-speaking community: regional polls (Flanders) for the national parliamentary election, 29/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, German-speaking community: European election results, 26/5/2019.
Portugal: national polls, 17-20/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Czech Republic: national polls, 31/10-4/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Hungary: national polls, 22-28/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Sweden: national polls, 17/11-1/12/2022 source: Wikipedia.
Austria: national polls, 1/12/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Bulgaria: national parliamentary election results, 2/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Denmark: national polls, 27/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Finland: national polls, 1-11/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Slovakia: national polls, 28/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Irleand: national polls, 23/11-2/12/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Croatia: national polls, 25/11-4/12/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Lithuania: national polls, 8-19/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Latvia: national polls, 19/10/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Slovenia: national polls, 11-24/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Estonia national polls, 17-28/11/2022, source: Wikipedia.
Cyprus: national parliamentary election results, 30/5/2021, source: Wikipedia.
Luxembourg: national polls, 7/6/2021, source: Europe Elects.
Malta: national polls, 1/12/2022, source: Malta Today.

 

Translation: Yannik Uhlenkotte / Manuel Müller.

Images: All graphs: Manuel Müller.