European Parliament seat projection (August 2024): EPP continues to gain ground

Deutsch

By Manuel Müller

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
EP2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–
EP today	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–
Aug. 24 (B)	44	45	137	77	191	73	88	25	31	9
Aug. 24 (D)	45	46	138	78	191	76	89	25	32	–

Baseline scenario,
as of 12 August 2024.
(Click to enlarge.)

Dynamic scenario,
as of 12 August 2024.
(Click to enlarge.)

It is now eight weeks since the European elections, the new Parliament and its political groups have been re-constituted, and Ursula von der Leyen (CDU/EPP) has been elected for a second term as president of the European Commission. But the European election year is far from over.

Nominating the Commission

Firstly, the other Commission members still have to be proposed by the governments, nominated by the Council, assigned portfolios by the Commission president and approved by the Parliament. An overview of all the candidates that are under discussion or have already been proposed can be found here. The informal deadline for nominations is 30 August, but von der Leyen intends to start interviews already in the next few days.

If she had her way, all governments would propose not one but two candidates – a man and a woman – from whom she could choose to ensure a balanced gender ratio. However, almost all governments have ignored this request and in many cases put forward only one male candidate. In some cases this was accompanied by eloquent but rather unconvincing justifications, in others it was the result of open power games in which male candidates simply refused to be part of a mixed duo.

Von der Leyen is now faced with the question of whether she will ask the governments to make additional nominations or whether she will limit herself to assigning less attractive portfolios to the many male commissioners in order to achieve parity at least at the level of the Commission vice-president. And since the European Parliament is also bound to be critical of this step backwards in terms of gender balance, it seems unlikely that all the nominees will make it through the hearings in the autumn.

Upcoming national elections

Second, the EU also still has a number of important national and regional elections this year. German state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg are just a few weeks away. They will be followed by national elections in Austria at the end of September, in Lithuania and Bulgaria in October and in Romania in December. Presidential elections will also be held in Romania and Croatia.

So there is still movement in European party politics. And despite the summer break, there have been at least a few new opinion polls in almost all member states since the European elections. This means that the first seat projection of the legislative period is once again largely based on polls for national parliamentary elections in the member states.

Differences in electoral behaviour

This also affects the results of the projection: The voting behaviour of European citizens differs between European and national elections – if only because of the differences in turnout, which makes party mobilisation an important factor in European elections. As a result, some parties systematically tend to do either better or worse in national than in European elections, even if the underlying political mood is the same. In other cases, however, the polling gains or losses of a party are due to actual changes in support over the summer.

In detail, the seat projection shows numerous changes compared to the results of the European elections. The following analysis attempts to clarify in which cases these changes can actually be attributed to shifts in the political mood and where they merely indicate differences in voting behaviour between the European and national elections.

EPP makes slight gains

After winning the European election, the European People’s Party (EPP) can once again make slight gains and would now have 191 seats in the baseline scenario of the seat projection (+3 compared to the election results). This is partly because its Irish and Estonian member parties are on the upswing. In France, too, Les Républicains and their allies Les Centristes did slightly better in the national parliamentary elections on 30 June than they had in the European elections a few weeks earlier – despite the fact that a wing of the Républicains had previously joined forces with the far-right RN (PfE) and the party spent much of the campaign fighting over its expulsion.

In other countries – such as Italy, Poland, Romania, Croatia and Lithuania – the poll ratings of EPP member parties have fallen slightly in recent weeks. These losses are mostly small fluctuations that should not be over-interpreted, especially in the current summer lull. However, the fact that several of these countries are due to hold elections before the end of the year might give the EPP some cause for concern.

S&D stable

For the centre-left S&D group, the seat projection brings little change overall. In France, the left-wing alliance, which includes the socialist PS, did slightly worse in the national elections than in the European elections. In Italy, the European elections brought a small surge for the PD, which has since slowed down.

On the other hand, the social democratic parties in the three Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland and Denmark) are doing much better in national polls than in the European elections. S&D members in Poland and Romania have also seen their approval ratings rise in recent weeks. Overall, the S&D group stands at 137 seats (+1) in the projection.

RE: Gains in France

With 77 seats (±0), the liberal Renew Europe group (RE) remains unchanged on balance. However, this hides some rather large shifts at national level: For example, the French governing party Renaissance did much better in the national than in the European elections. In Poland and Romania, too, the Liberals’ national polls are much better than their European election results.

However, the opposite is true in the Nordic countries as well as Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovakia. In addition, the RE group was joined by an independent candidate and a minor party from Ireland after the European elections, neither of which appear in national polls (and therefore in the seat projection).

Greens and Left fall back

On the left of the political spectrum, the Greens/EFA group suffers significant losses in the seat projection, reaching only 45 seats (–⁠8). However, this follows a familiar pattern in which the Greens, as well as their ally Volt, generally perform worse in national elections – and thus in the national polls on which this seat projection is based – than in European elections. In the current case, this applies in particular to the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and Slovenia. Only the Portuguese Livre and the Czech Piráti have made gains compared to the European elections.

The Left group also sees a slight decline, with the Finnish Vasemmistoliitto, and to a lesser degree the Portuguese CDU, failing to transfer their good results in the European elections to the national polls. The Italian M5S, on the other hand, has partly recovered from its disappointing election result. Overall, the Left group now stands at 44 seats (–⁠2) in the projection.

ECR declining in France and Poland

On the right, the ECR group falls back to 73 seats in the projection (–⁠5). This is partly due to France, where the former ECR member party Reconquête split during the national election campaign and fell well below the five per cent threshold applicable in European elections. At the same time, the Polish PiS is also doing worse in the national polls than in the European elections.

In Sweden and Finland, on the other hand, the ECR member parties’ poor European election results are not fully reflected in the national polls. Moreover, Slovakia’s SaS would now narrowly win a seat again, and Italy’s FdI is also making slight gains.

PfE continues to grow

The far-right “Patriots for Europe” (PfE) group, which has essentially replaced the former ID group, has made significant gains in the seat projection, climbing to 88 seats (+4). This is mainly due to the Dutch PVV, the Portuguese Chega and, to a lesser extent, the Czech ANO, all of which performed significantly worse in the European elections than in national polls. In addition, the Estonian EKRE continues to appear in the seat projection as part of the PfE group. In reality, its only elected MEP left the party and joined the ECR group shortly after the European election.

On the other hand, Hungary’s Fidesz and Denmark’s DF lost slightly compared to the European elections. If the elections were repeated now, the latter would not make it into the Parliament again.

ESN would lose group status

The newly formed third far-right group “Europe of Sovereign Nations” (ESN) ostensibly appears stable in the seat projection, remaining at 25 seats (±0). However, this is mainly due to slight gains by the Polish Konfederacja, while the French and Lithuanian member parties would no longer enter the European Parliament now.

This means that if the European elections were held again this Sunday, the ESN group would have only MEPs from six different member states – too few to form a political group under the Parliament’s rules of procedure.

Non-attached: BSW and Hlas up, SALF and Stačilo down

Among the non-attached parties, Germany’s BSW and, in particular, Slovakia’s Hlas are doing better in the national polls than in the European elections. Conversely, the Czech Stačilo and Spanish SALF are unable to maintain their good European election results in the polls.

The projection also does not include individual MEPs from the German AfD and the Slovak REP who were not accepted into the ESN group by their own parties. The seat projection is based on the assumption that these MEPs would not stand again in a future European election, meaning that the entire AfD and REP delegations would join the ESN group. As a result, there are slightly fewer non-attached MEPs in the seat projection than in the current Parliament (31 seats/–⁠2).

“Others” from left and right

The seat projection also includes “other” parties again – i.e. parties that are not represented in the European Parliament and do not belong to any European party, so that they cannot be clearly assigned to any political group (9 seats/+9). These include, in particular, the right-wing populist NA from Lithuania, which was founded at the beginning of 2024 and is now one of the country’s strongest parties in the polls, but did not participate in the European election. Austria’s Bierpartei also did not put up any candidates for the European election. Other “other” parties did not enter the Parliament at the time, but would gain a seat in the current polls.

The dynamic scenario of the seat projection assigns the “other” parties to one of the existing parliamentary groups (or to the group of non-attached parties). The resulting picture is quite uncertain in detail, but overall it may be closer to the actual distribution of seats after a future European election than the baseline scenario. At present, however, the nine “other” seats would be so widely distributed among the groups that the two scenarios do not differ significantly.

The overview

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

In contrast, the dynamic scenario of the seat projection assigns each “other” party to the parliamentary group to which it is politically closest. In addition, the dynamic scenario may also take into account likely future group changes of parties that are already represented in the Parliament. In the table, the changes from the baseline to the dynamic scenario are indicated by coloured text and in the mouse-over text. The mouse-over text also lists any other groups that the party in question might plausibly join.

In the absence of pan-European election 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. For more information on European parties and political groups in the European Parliament, click here.

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
EP2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–
EP today	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–
Aug. 24 (B)	44	45	137	77	191	73	88	25	31	9
Aug. 24 (D)	45	46	138	78	191	76	89	25	32	–
	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
DE	3 Linke 1 Tier	11 Grüne 3 Volt	14 SPD	5 FDP 3 FW	29 Union 1 Familie 1 ÖDP			15 AfD	7 BSW 2 Partei 1 PdF
FR	8 LFI	4 EELV	11 PS	19 RE	9 LR		30 RN
IT	10 M5S 2 SI	4 EV	20 PD		7 FI 1 SVP	25 FdI	7 Lega
ES	2 Pod 1 Sumar 1 Bildu	1 ERC 1 CatComù 1 Comp	20 PSOE	1 PNV	24 PP		6 Vox		2 SALF 1 Junts
PL			5 Lewica	3 PL2050	19 KO 3 KP	16 PiS		4 Konf	3 Konf
RO			12 PSD	4 USR 1 PMP	8 PNL	6 AUR			2 SOS
NL		3 GL	4 PvdA	5 VVD 2 D66	2 CDA 2 BBB 3 NSC		10 PVV
BE	2 PTB	1 Groen 1 Ecolo	2 Vooruit 2 PS	1 O-VLD 3 MR 1 LE	2 CD&V 1 CSP	3 N-VA	3 VB
CZ		2 Piráti			2 STAN 1 TOP09 1 KDU-ČSL	4 ODS	8 ANO 2 Přísaha	1 SPD
EL	3 Syriza		3 PASOK		7 ND	2 EL	1 FL		2 KKE 1 PE 1 NIKI	1 MéRA
HU			2 DK		7 TISZA		10 Fidesz	1 MHM		1 MKKP
PT	1 BE	1 Livre	7 PS	2 IL	7 PSD		3 Chega
SE	2 V	2 MP	7 S	1 C	4 M 1 KD	4 SD
AT		2 Grüne	4 SPÖ	2 Neos	5 ÖVP		6 FPÖ			1 Bier
BG			2 BSP	3 DPS 2 PP	5 GERB 1 DB	1 ITN		3 V
DK	1 Enhl.	3 SF	4 S	1 V 1 M 1 RV	2 LA 1 K	1 DD
SK				4 PS	1 KDH	1 SaS		1 REP	5 Smer 3 Hlas
FI	2 Vas	1 Vihreät	3 SDP	2 Kesk	4 Kok	3 PS
IE	4 SF			3 FF	6 FG					1 SD
HR		1 Možemo	4 SDP		5 HDZ	1 DP				1 Most
LT		1 DSVL	3 LSDP	1 LRLS	2 TS-LKD	2 LVŽS				2 NA
LV		1 Prog	1 SDPS		2 JV	1 NA 1 LRA	1 LPV			1 ZZS 1 ST!
SI			1 SD	3 GS	4 SDS 1 NSi
EE			1 SDE	1 RE 1 KE	3 Isamaa		1 EKRE
CY	1 AKEL		1 DIKO		2 DISY	1 ELAM			1 Fidías
LU		1 Gréng	1 LSAP	1 DP	2 CSV	1 ADR
MT			3 PL		3 PN

Timeline (baseline scenario)

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
24-08-12	44	45	137	77	191	73	88	25	31	9
EP 2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–

Timeline (dynamic scenario)

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
24-08-12	45	46	138	78	191	76	89	25	32	–
EP 2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–

Timeline 2019-2024 (baseline scenario)

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	ID	NI	other
29/05/2024	37	57	136	81	172	79	66	50	42
22/04/2024	35	51	132	86	173	81	83	35	44
26/02/2024	35	48	135	85	176	78	85	36	42
08/01/2024	33	45	141	86	169	75	89	43	39
06/11/2023	43	43	137	90	170	78	76	38	45
11/09/2023	42+1	46	144+3	90+1	157+5	77	72+2	36+1	41+2
17/07/2023	41	48	136	94	160	79	70	36	41
22/05/2023	49	50	137	92	162	79	67	33	36
27/03/2023	44	42	137	94	162	78	68	38	42
01/02/2023	50	42	135	96	168	78	65	37	34
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 2024” line indicates the distribution of seats as of July 16, 2024, when the European Parliament was constituted following the election in June 2019.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. Until September 2023, the seat projection is based on 705 seats, thereafter on 720 seats. In the figures for September 2023, the transition is marked by superscript numbers.

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.

Attribution of national parties to parliamentary groups

Baseline scenario: The projection assigns parties that are already represented in the European Parliament to their current parliamentary group. 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 “other” 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 (i.e. 7 out of 27) are required to form a parliamentary group. Groupings that do not meet these conditions would therefore have to win over additional MEPs 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 a different parliamentary group in the dynamic scenario are marked in the colour of that group. Moreover, the name of the group appears in the mouse-over text. Since the attributions in the dynamic scenario are partly based on a subjective assessment of the political orientation and strategy of the parties, they can 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.

The full names of the political groups and of the national parties appear as mouse-over text when the mouse pointer is held still over the name in the table. In the case of “other” parties and parties that are likely to change group after the next European elections, the mouse-over text also lists the groups that the party might join. The group to which the party is assigned in the dynamic scenario is listed first.

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 the last specific European election poll was published more than a fortnight ago or where significantly fewer polls for European than for national parliamentary elections were published in the last two weeks, the most recent available poll for the national parliamentary election or the average of all national or European parliamentary polls from the two weeks preceding the most recent available poll is used instead. For countries where there are no recent polls for parliamentary elections, polls for presidential elections may be used instead, with the presidential candidates’ polling figures assigned to their respective parties (this concerns France and Cyprus 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 projected to the total number of seats in the country. For countries where the election is held in regional constituencies without interregional proportional compensation (currently Belgium and Ireland), regional polling data is used where available. Where this is not the case, the number of seats is calculated for each constituency using the overall national polling data. 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 distribution of list places (usually based on the 2024 European election results). This includes the following cases: Spain: Sumar: Sumar (place 1 and 6 on the list), CatComù (2), Compromís (3), IU (4) and Más País (5); Ahora Republicas: ERC (1, 4), Bildu (2) and BNG (3); CEUS: PNV (1) and CC (2); Romania: ADU: USR (1-2, 4-5, 7-9), PMP (3) and FD (6); Netherlands: PvdA (1, 3, 5 etc.) and GL (2, 4, 6 etc.); Czechia: TOP09 (1, 3, 5 etc.) and KDU-ČSL (2, 4, 6 etc.); Hungary: DK (1-4, 6, 8), MSZP (5) and PM (7). When the election comes closer and the parties announce their candidates, the projection uses the distribution on the actual list instead. In some countries, the exact distribution of seats within an electoral alliance depends on preference votes and/or regional constituency results, so that only a plausible assumption can be made in advance. This concerns the following cases: Italy: AVS: SI (1, 3) and EV (2, 4); Poland: TD: PL2050 (1, 3, 5 etc.), KP (2, 4, 6 etc.). For Poland, the projection assumes that the members of the Konfederacja are equally divided between the ESN group and the group of non-attached members. In Italy, a special rule allows minority parties to enter the Parliament with only a low number of votes, provided they form an alliance with a larger party. The projection assumes such an alliance between FI and the SVP.

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 in the last European election (3 seats each for Volt and FW, 2 seats for Partei, 1 seat each for Tierschutzpartei, ödp, Familienpartei, and PdF). If a small party achieves a better value in current polls than in the last European election, the poll rating is used instead.

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, 6-10/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
France: results of the first round of national parliamentary elections, 30/6/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Italy: national polls, 18-29/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Spain: national polls, 8-9/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Poland: national polls, 28/7-8/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Romania: national polls, 27/6/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Netherlands: national polls, 29/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium: results of the European election, 9/6/2024.
Czechia: national polls, July 2024, source: Wikipedia.
Greece: national polls, 28/6-4/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Hungary: national polls, 8-17/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Portugal: national polls, 13-26/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Sweden: national polls, 16-26/6/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Austria: national polls, 27/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Bulgaria: results of the European election, 9/6/2024.
Denmark: national polls, 11/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Slovakia: national polls, 8-15/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Finland: national polls, 6/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Ireland: national polls, 2/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Croatia: national polls, 25/7-4/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Lithuania: national polls, 21-29/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Latvia: national polls, June 2024, source: Wikipedia.
Slovenia: national polls, 17-25/7/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Estonia: national polls, 4-9/8/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Cyprus: results of the European election, 9/6/2024.
Luxembourg: results of the European election, 9/6/2024.
Malta: results of the European election, 9/6/2024.

Pictures: all graphs: Manuel Müller.