European Parliament seat projection (October 2024): Far right makes further gains, EPP and Greens lose 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	86	25	31	–
Aug. 24 (B)	44	45	137	77	191	73	88	25	31	9
Oct. 24 (B)	44	41	136	79	186	74	96	26	29	9
Oct. 24 (D)	46	41	137	79	187	77	97	26	30	–

Baseline scenario,
as of 7 October 2024.
(Click to enlarge.)

Dynamic scenario,
as of 7 October 2024.
(Click to enlarge.)

The rise of far-right parties across Europe was the central theme of this year’s European elections – and four months on, there is still no end in sight. The FPÖ (PfE) emerged as the largest party in Austria’s national elections at the end of September, while NA (“other”) and Văzrašdane (ESN) could both come second in the Lithuanian and Bulgarian parliamentary elections in October. Also at EU level, the far-right groups are making further gains: If the European elections were held now, they would have a combined total of 196 seats – ten more than in the last seat projection in August and a new all-time high.

By contrast, the centre-right European People’s Party loses the ground it had gained in August and is now projected to fall slightly below its result in the June elections. The Greens also lose slightly and are now just behind the Left group in the projection. The other parliamentary groups remain largely stable.

EPP: Hungarian shooting star

Looking at the poll results in detail, however, the losses are not too worrying for the EPP. In most cases, they are only small fluctuations, often within the margin of error of the polls, which just happen to point in the same direction in several member states.

The most striking changes are in the Netherlands, where the two newcomer government parties BBB and NSC both lost ground after the Schoof cabinet took office, while the classical christian-democratic CDA stabilised. In addition, the EPP made significant gains in Hungary: Shooting star Péter Magyar’s Tisza, which entered the European Parliament for the first time in June, is now only a few percentage points behind Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz (PfE) in some polls. Overall, the EPP now stands at 186 seats in the baseline scenario (–⁠5 compared to the August projection).

S&D: Mixed polls

For the social democratic S&D group, the latest polls brought mixed results. The German SPD and the Greek PASOK have made slight gains, and the Finnish SDP has regained the national lead it had briefly lost to Kokoomus (EPP) after the European elections. In addition, the Irish Labour Party now has a slim chance of winning a seat in the European Parliament.

On the other hand, the Spanish and Italian S&D member parties’ brief summer highs have come to an end. And in Hungary, the social-democratic DK is falling a victim of the rise of Tisza: Despite forming an alliance with other centre-left parties since the European election, it would now win only one seat in the European Parliament. Overall, the S&D now stands at 136 seats in the projection (–⁠1).

RE: Trouble in Bulgaria

The situation is slightly better for the liberal Renew Europe group (79 seats/+⁠2). In Italy, a new edition of the alliance between the two parties Italia Viva and Più Europa (which ran in the European election under the name “Stati Uniti d’Europa”) would now just pass the national four-per-cent threshold. Liberal parties also made small gains in Estonia and Lithuania, but lost some ground in Germany and Portugal. In Denmark, the right-wing liberal Venstre is consolidating at the expense of the smaller centrist RV and Moderaterne parties, neither of which would win a seat in the European Parliament any more.

Finally, there is trouble in the Bulgarian DPS, which has split into two competing lists just weeks before the upcoming national parliamentary elections: The APS faction, led by Ahmed Dogan, can count on the support of the European liberals. More unclear is the future of the other faction, DPS-NN: its leader, Delyan Peevski, has been sanctioned in the US and the UK on corruption charges, and had already caused debates in the summer about expelling the DPS from the European liberal party ALDE.

For the time being, all MEPs elected for the DPS – one of whom belongs to the APS and the other two to the DPS-NN faction – have remained with Renew Europe. In the baseline scenario of the projection, both parties are therefore still placed in this group. However, in the dynamic scenario (which takes into account possible but still uncertain future group changes) the DPS-NN is now classified as non-attached.

Greens: Post-election hangover

Further to the left of the political spectrum, the European Greens are experiencing their almost traditional post-European-election hangover: As in 2014 and 2019, the group made significant gains in the projection just before the election, only to fall again shortly afterwards.

This pattern is partly due to the type of polls used for the projection: The pollsters are aware that the Greens often do better in European than in national elections, and therefore show better figures for them in European-election-specific polls, which in most countries are only published in the last weeks before the European elections. In part, however, the Green hangover must also be due to issue cycles: Also in polls for national parliament elections (which are now again used in the projection for almost all countries), the Green parties are now weaker than they were in August.

In particular, the Greens are currently struggling in Germany and also underperformed the summer polls in the Austrian parliamentary elections in September. In Denmark, too, the summer high that brought the Green SF party to first place in some polls after the European elections has passed. In total, the Greens are projected to win 41 seats (–⁠4).

Left: Split but stable

The Left group, on the other hand, has made gains in the Netherlands – both the left-wing SP and the animalist PvdD would now narrowly win a seat. In Greece, on the other hand, the former governing party Syriza is embroiled in internal power struggles and is increasingly losing voters to the social-democratic PASOK (S&D) and other left-wing parties. Ireland’s SF is also experiencing a prolonged downward trend and Finland’s Vasemmistoliitto has seen the end of a summer spike triggered by the European election.

Meanwhile, the recent split in the European Left has no impact on the seat projection: The old Party of the European Left and the new European Left Alliance continue to form a joint group in the Parliament. As in August, this group has a total of 44 seats (±⁠0).

ECR and ESN: Small gains

Among the far right, the ECR made only small gains. While the Latvian NA could improve their polls significantly and the Polish PiS and the Danish DD made slight advances, the Czech ODS and the Lithuanian LVŽS suffered losses. This gives the ECR a total of 74 seats (+⁠1).

There was also little change in the small extremist ESN (26 seats/+⁠1). In particular, the German AfD and the Czech SPD made gains compared to the summer. However, as in August, the ESN is now projected to have member parties from only six different countries and would therefore no longer be able to form a parliamentary group.

PfE: All-time high with a Polish new arrival

More significant are the gains of the PfE group, which reaches a new all-time high for far-right groups in the European Parliament with 96 seats (+8) in the projection. Many of its member parties are able to improve their poll ratings slightly compared to the summer, although in most cases these are only small changes within the polls’ margin of error.

In addition, the PfE Group is benefiting from the first changes in the composition of the European Parliament since the beginning of this parliamentary term: At the beginning of October, two previously non-attached MEPs from the Polish Konfederacja joined the group. Accordingly, the seats of the Konfederacja are now divided between PfE and ESN in the projection.

Without Konfederacja, the number of seats held by non-attached parties falls in the projection – even though in Romania the far-right irredentist and anti-Ukrainian party SOS is making significant gains in the polls ahead of the national parliamentary elections in December. In total, the non-attached parties now stand at 29 seats (–⁠2).

“Others”: No satirical parties from Hungary and Austria

Finally, there have been few changes among the “other” parties – i.e. parties that are not currently 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/±⁠0). New to the table are the following parties:

• the Romanian centre-right party FD, which is in an electoral alliance with the liberal USR, but is close to the EPP at European level; and
• the Greek left-wing party NA, which split from Syriza but is likely to join the Left group if it enters the European Parliament.
  

In contrast, two Central European satirical parties would no longer enter the European Parliament: In Hungary, the MKKP, like other opposition parties, is being pushed out by Péter Magyar’s Tisza. In Austria, the Bierpartei fell far short of expectations in September’s national parliament elections and did not reach the four-per-cent threshold.

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 also takes 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 alternative 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	86	25	31	–
Aug. 24 (B)	44	45	137	77	191	73	88	25	31	9
Oct. 24 (B)	44	41	136	79	186	74	96	26	29	9
Oct. 24 (D)	46	41	137	79	187	77	97	26	30	–
	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
DE	3 Linke 1 Tier	10 Grüne 3 Volt	15 SPD	4 FDP 3 FW	29 Union 1 Familie 1 ÖDP			16 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	18 PD	3 IV/+E	7 FI 1 SVP	24 FdI	7 Lega
ES	2 Sumar 2 Pod 1 Bildu	2 Sumar 1 ERC	19 PSOE	1 PNV	23 PP		7 Vox		2 SALF 1 Junts
PL			4 Lewica	3 PL2050	19 KO 3 KP	18 PiS	3 Konf	3 Konf
RO			11 PSD	4 USR 1 PMP	7 PNL	6 AUR			3 SOS	1 FD
NL	1 SP 1 PvdD	3 GL	4 PvdA	5 VVD 2 D66	3 CDA 1 BBB		11 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	3 ODS	9 ANO 1 PaM	1 SPD
EL	2 Syriza		4 PASOK		6 ND	2 EL	1 FL		2 KKE 1 PE 1 NIKI	1 MéRA 1 NA
HU			1 DK		9 TISZA		10 Fidesz	1 MHM
PT	1 BE		7 PS	1 IL	8 PSD		4 Chega
SE	2 V	2 MP	8 S	1 C	4 M	4 SD
AT		1 Grüne	4 SPÖ	2 Neos	6 ÖVP		7 FPÖ
BG			2 BSP	2 APS 2 PP 1 DPS-NN	5 GERB 1 DB	1 ITN		3 V
DK	1 Enhl.	2 SF	4 S	2 V	2 LA 1 K	2 DD	1 DF
SK				4 PS	1 KDH	1 SaS		1 REP	5 Smer 3 Hlas
FI	1 Vas	1 Vihreät	4 SDP	2 Kesk	4 Kok	3 PS
IE	3 SF		1 Labour	3 FF	6 FG					1 SD
HR		1 Možemo	4 SDP		5 HDZ	1 DP				1 Most
LT		1 DSVL	3 LSDP	1 LRLS 1 LP	2 TS-LKD	1 LVŽS				2 NA
LV		1 Prog	1 SDPS		1 JV	2 NA 1 LRA	1 LPV			1 ZZS 1 ST!
SI			1 SD	3 GS	4 SDS 1 NSi
EE			1 SDE	2 RE 1 KE	2 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
24-10-07	44	41	136	79	186	74	96	26	29	9
24-10-07	46	41	137	79	187	77	97	26	30	–
24-08-12	45	46	138	78	191	76	89	25	32	–
EP 2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–

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.

An overview of older seat projections from previous legislative terms can be found here (2014-2019) and here (2019-2024).

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 and PfE groups. 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, 27/9-7/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
France: results of the first round of the national parliamentary election, 30/6/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Italy: national polls, 19-30/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Spain: national polls, 19-27/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Poland: national polls, 28/9-6/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Romania: national polls, August 2024, source: Wikipedia.
Netherlands: national polls, 23-28/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium: results of the European Parliament election, 9/6/2024.
Czechia: national polls, 31.8-10/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Greece: national polls, 21/9-2/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Hungary: national polls, 6-18/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Portugal: national polls, 5/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Sweden: national polls, 22/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Austria: national polls, 1/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Bulgaria: national polls, 24/9-1/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Denmark: national polls, 27/9-30/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Slovakia: national polls, 16-26/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Finland: national polls, 1/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Ireland: national polls, 4/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Croatia: national polls, 25/9-6/10/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Lithuania: national polls, 21-25/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Latvia: national polls, August 2024, source: Wikipedia.
Slovenia: national polls, 11-19/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Estonia: national polls, 18-29/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Cyprus: results of the European Parliament election, 9/6/2024.
Luxembourg: results of the European Parliament election, 9/6/2024.
Malta: national polls, 19/9/2024, source: Wikipedia.

Pictures: all graphs: Manuel Müller.