30 Januar 2025

European Parliament seat projection (January 2025): “Patriots” lose ground, Left and Greens make gains

By Manuel Müller


Left G/EFA S&D RE EPP ECR PfE ESN NI other
EP2024 46531367718878842533
EP today 46531367518880862531
Dec. 24 (B) 434113183186731002724
12
Jan. 25 (B) 48431308118577932924
10
Jan. 25 (D) 49431328218580962924
Baseline scenario,
as of 27 January 2025.
(Click to enlarge.
)

Dynamic scenario,
as of 2 December 2024.
(Click to enlarge.)

In the US, Donald Trump (Rep./IDU) has been re-inaugurated as president; in Germany, the CDU (EPP) is cracking up the firewall that has so far kept the AfD (ESN) out of political influence and polarising the campaign for the federal election of 23 February: Political events have become quite turbulent in recent weeks, and it has often been parties on the far right end of the political spectrum that have benefited.

If we look at the European election polls, however, the recent results of the far-right parties have been mixed at best. Compared to the last projection in early December 2024, the largest far-right group, Patriots for Europe (PfE), has lost many seats, while the ECR and ESN have made slight gains. In contrast, the most significant progress has been made by the Left group, and also the Greens are in a slightly better position than two months ago. The three “platform” groups – the centre-right EPP, the centre-left S&D and the liberal RE – have all suffered slight losses.

EPP weakening in Germany

In the case of the European People’s Party, these losses are mainly due to Germany, where the CDU/CSU is clearly leading in the federal election campaign but has been gradually losing support since early December. (Most of the polls included in this projection were conducted before the recent asylum policy initiative by chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz). The Austrian ÖVP has also lost significant support following the announcement of coalition talks with the FPÖ (PfE). In Poland and Latvia, the governing EPP parties are similarly polling slightly worse than before.

In other countries, however, the EPP has made gains in recent weeks. In Hungary, there was a much-commented poll putting the EPP’s Tisza party well ahead of the governing Fidesz (PfE) – although it remains to be seen whether they will be able to consolidate this lead. The Portuguese AD and the Dutch CDA have also improved slightly. Estonia’s Isamaa, which has dominated national polls since the end of 2023, would now narrowly win a third seat in the European Parliament. Overall, the EPP group would still have 185 seats (–⁠1 compared to the December 2024 projection).

Slow decline of the S&D

The situation for the European Socialists is similarly mixed. They have made some gains in Germany and Bulgaria (where they are part of the newly formed coalition government); in Sweden they are consolidating their position at the top of the national party landscape.

By contrast, the slow decline of the Socialists continues in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Lithuania. All in all, this brings the group to 130 seats – just one less than in December, but the S&D’s worst figure in the projection since October 2022.

RE expels member party

The RE group also suffered losses (81 seats/–⁠2). The polls themselves are mixed for the Liberals. They have made slight gains in the Netherlands and slowed down their long slide in Slovenia, but they are slipping further in Portugal and would only just make it into the European Parliament in Italy.

However, there is something that has a greater impact on the seat projection than these fluctuations: Following the split of the Bulgarian RE member party DPS in the summer of 2024, the group decided to expel the larger successor party DPS-NN, led by media tycoon Deljan Peevski, who is suspected of corruption. Only the smaller successor party (known as APS or “DPS-Dogan”) will remain in the group.

Left and Greens gain ground

Meanwhile, the biggest gains in recent weeks have been made by the Left, which has improved to 48 seats (+5). The German Linke, the Spanish Podemos, the Portuguese CDU and the Greek Syriza have all made some progress after a long slump; the Dutch animal rights party PvdD would now narrowly re-enter the Parliament. All these gains are based on relatively small fluctuations in the polls, and it remains to be seen whether they will stabilise in the coming weeks. But for the time being, the Left Party has achieved its best result in the projection since spring 2023.

The Greens also slightly increased their number of seats. In both Germany and Austria, they benefited from the end of unpopular coalitions with the FDP (RE) and ÖVP (EPP). In total, the Greens/EFA group now stands at 43 seats in the projection (+2).

ECR with new arrival from Spain

On the right of the parliamentary spectrum, the ECR also made gains in the projection (77 seats/+4). In Latvia, the NA has strengthened its position as the largest national party, in Sweden the SD has once again replaced the Moderaterna (EPP) as the strongest force in the right-wing bloc, and in Poland the PiS has again pulled ahead of the PO (EPP) in several polls.

Moreover, the ECR Group is benefiting from the arrival of the Spanish right-wing populist party SALF. SALF won three MEPs in the European elections, two of whom were now admitted to the group. Only party leader Alvise Pérez himself, who is facing several charges in Spain for illegal campaign financing, remains non-attached for the time being.

The small far-right group ESN has also grown stronger in the polls since December (29 seats/+2). This is mainly due to the German AfD, which made gains in the federal election campaign.

Setbacks for the PfE

The picture looks very different for the largest far-right parliamentary group, the PfE. With a loss of seven seats, it is the biggest loser of the last eight weeks (93 seats/–⁠7).

These losses are particularly pronounced in the Netherlands, where the PVV has only been part of the government for six months, but has already caused the first serious coalition crisis in November with its incendiary anti-Muslim rhetoric. Hungary’s Fidesz and Czechia’s ANO have also recently suffered setbacks. Moreover, the alliance between the Czech Přísaha and Motoristé parties recently collapsed, leaving each party too weak to win seats in the European Parliament.

Non-attached and “others”

There has been little change among the non-attached parties. While Germany’s BSW and Slovakia’s Hlas-SD fell slightly, the Czech Stačilo (an electoral alliance around the post-communist KSČM) would now win a seat in the European Parliament again. All three parties represent left-conservative and Eurosceptic positions. With the entry of the Bulgarian DPS-NN and the departure of the Spanish SALF, the overall number of non-attached parties remains unchanged at 24 seats (±⁠0).

The “other” parties – i.e. parties that are not currently represented in the European Parliament and do not belong to a European party, so that cannot be clearly assigned to a political group – suffered slight losses (10 seats/–⁠2).

New to the tableau is the left-wing MéRA25 from Greece – the national offshoot of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) that was founded in 2016 by former Greek finance minister Yánis Varoufákis with the aim to democratise the EU by 2025. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian far-right party MECh and the Hungarian satirical party MKKP would not win seats in the Parliament any more.

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 46531367718878842533
EP today 46531367518880862531
Dec. 24 (B) 434113183186731002724
12
Jan. 25 (B) 48431308118577932924
10
Jan. 25 (D) 49431328218580962924

Left G/EFA S&D RE EPP ECR PfE ESN NI other
DE 4 Linke
1 Tier
12 Grüne
3 Volt
15 SPD 4 FDP
3 FW
27 Union
1 Familie
1 ÖDP


18 AfD 4 BSW
2 Partei
1 PdF

FR 8 LFI
4 EELV 11 PS 19 RE 9 LR
30 RN


IT 9 M5S
2 SI
3 EV 19 PD 3 IV/+E 8 FI
1 SVP
24 FdI 7 Lega


ES 2 Sumar
3 Pod
1 Bildu
2 Sumar
1 ERC

18 PSOE 1 PNV
22 PP 1 SALF 9 Vox
1 Junts

PL

4 Lewica 3 PL2050
18 KO
2 KP
19 PiS 3 Konf 4 Konf

RO

9 PSD
4 USR
1 PMP
5 PNL
2 UDMR
7 AUR

3 SOS 2 POT
NL 1 SP
1 PvdD
3 GL
3 PvdA 6 VVD
3 D66
4 CDA
1 BBB

9 PVV


BE 2 PTB 1 Groen
2 Vooruit
2 PS
1 O-VLD
3 MR
2 LE
2 CD&V
1 CSP
3 N-VA 3 VB


CZ
1 Piráti


3 STAN
1 TOP09
1 KDU-ČSL
3 ODS 9 ANO
2 SPD 1 Stačilo

EL 2 Syriza
4 PASOK
6 ND 2 EL 1 FL
2 KKE
1 PE
1 NIKI
1 MéRA
1 KD
HU

1 DK

11 TISZA

8 Fidesz
1 MHM

PT 1 BE
1 CDU

6 PS 1 IL 8 AD
4 Chega


SE 2 V 1 MP 8 S 1 C
4 M
5 SD



AT
2 Grüne 4 SPÖ 2 Neos 4 ÖVP
8 FPÖ


BG

2 BSP 2 PP
1 APS
5 GERB
1 DB
1 ITN

3 V 2 DPS-NN

DK 1 Enhl. 3 SF 4 S 2 V
2 LA
1 K
2 DD



SK


4 PS 2 Slov
1 KDH
1 SaS

1 REP 4 Smer
2 Hlas

FI 1 Vas 1 Vihreät 4 SDP 2 Kesk
4 Kok
3 PS



IE 4 SF


5 FF
4 FG



1 SD
HR
2 Možemo 4 SDP
5 HDZ



1 Most
LT
2 DSVL 2 LSDP 2 LS
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 Levica

1 SD 3 GS 4 SDS





EE

1 SDE 1 RE
1 KE
3 Isamaa
1 EKRE


CY 1 AKEL
1 DIKO

3 DISY 1 ELAM



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
25-01-27 48 43 130 81 185 77 93 29 24 10
24-12-02 43 41 131 83 186 73 100 27 24 12
24-10-07 44 41 136 79 186 74 96 26 29 9
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
25-01-27 49 43 132 82 185 80 96 29 24
24-12-02 43 42 133 82 186 77 104 27 26
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.). In Czechia, some polls combine ODS (ECR), TOP09 and KDU-ČSL (both EPP); in these cases, two thirds of the seats are allocated to the ODS and one third to the alliance of TOP09 and KDU-ČSL. 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, 21-27/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
France: results of the first round of the national parliamentary election, 30/6/2024, source: Wikipedia,
Italy: national polls, 8-13/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Spain: national polls, 11-24/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Poland: national polls, 11-24/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Romania: Ergebnisse der nationalen Parlamentswahl, 1/12/2024, source: Wikipedia,
Netherlands: national polls, 20-25/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Belgium, Dutch community: polls for the national parliamentary election, 24/11/2024, source: HLN,
Belgium, French community: polls for the national parliamentary election, 24/11/2024, source: HLN,
Belgium, German community: results of the European election, 9/6/2024,
Czechia: national polls, 13-21/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Greece: national polls, 10-21/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Hungary: national polls, 10/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Portugal: national polls, 5/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Sweden: national polls, 6-12/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Austria: national polls, 15-21/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Bulgaria: national polls, 12-20/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Denmark: national polls, 19-22/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Slovakia: national polls, 13-17/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Finland: national polls, 7-17/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Ireland: national polls, 11-22/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Croatia: national polls, 10-25/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Lithuania: national polls, 20/12/2024, source: Wikipedia,
Latvia: national polls, December 2024, source: Wikipedia,
Slovenia: national polls, 15-23/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Estonia: national polls, 19-21/1/2025, source: Wikipedia,
Cyprus: national polls, October 2024, source: Europe Elects,
Luxembourg: results of the European election, 9/6/2024,
Malta: national polls, 17/11/2024, source: Wikipedia.

Pictures: all graphs: Manuel Müller.

Keine Kommentare:

Kommentar veröffentlichen

Kommentare sind hier herzlich willkommen und werden nach der Sichtung freigeschaltet. Auch wenn anonyme Kommentare technisch möglich sind, ist es für eine offene Diskussion hilfreich, wenn Sie Ihre Beiträge mit Ihrem Namen kennzeichnen. Um einen interessanten Gedankenaustausch zu ermöglichen, sollten sich Kommentare außerdem unmittelbar auf den Artikel beziehen und möglichst auf dessen Argumentation eingehen. Bitte haben Sie Verständnis, dass Meinungsäußerungen ohne einen klaren inhaltlichen Bezug zum Artikel hier in der Regel nicht veröffentlicht werden.