European Parliament seat projection (May 2025): Far right stronger than ever before – again

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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	75	188	80	85	27	30	–
Mar. 25 (B)	52	41	131	73	177	79	99	33	24	11
May 25 (B)	49	40	130	76	179	79	100	35	23	9
May 25 (D)	49	40	132	78	179	82	101	36	23	–

Baseline scenario,
as of 19 May 2025.
(Click to enlarge.)

Dynamic scenario,
as of 19 May 2025.
(Click to enlarge.)

It has almost become routine: With 214 seats, the far-right bloc has once again set a new record in the current European Parliament seat projection, just as it did in October (196 seats), December (200 seats) and March (211 seats). If elections were held now, the three far-right groups ECR, PfE and ESN combined would have 27 more seats than in the last European election in June 2024, when they won 187 – more than in any previous election.

Global anti-Trump effect?

In recent weeks, there has been some discussion about how Donald Trump’s presidency in the USA might affect far-right parties in Europe and other democracies around the world. Following the Liberal Party’s spectacular comeback in the Canadian general election in April and the Labor Party’s almost equally surprising success in the Australian election at the beginning of May, newspapers such as the New York Times saw signs of a global anti-Trump movement that could boost left-liberal parties worldwide.

In Europe, however, there has been no such development. If anything, the anti-Trump effect is most evident in Danish polls, where the governing Socialdemokraterne (PES) have made significant gains since the beginning of the year – seemingly due to a rally-’round-the-flag effect in response to America’s threatening behaviour towards Greenland. However, these gains are primarily at the expense of the centre-left opposition party SF (EGP).

Europe’s far right keeps growing

By contrast, Trump had hardly any impact on the poll ratings of far-right parties in Europe. They are continuing to rise at roughly the same pace as before he took office. Admittedly, many European far-right parties are struggling with the question of how far to embrace Trump’s agenda and implicitly recognise him as a role model and leader of a common global movement. But for most of their voters, world politics are likely to play only a minor role in their voting decisions.

The European far-right parties have long established themselves to such an extent that their weal and woe does not depend on the policies of the US government. Correspondingly, the democratic centre parties in Europe can hardly hope that Trump’s erratic decisions will drag down the popularity of his European allies as well as his own.

EPP recovering

However, it is not only the far-right parties that have made slight gains in Europe recently. The conservative European People’s Party and the liberal Renew Europe group have also recovered somewhat following their collapse in the last projection at the end of March. Centre-left groups, on the other hand, have suffered slight losses, but the overall changes compared to the March projection are rather limited everywhere.

Specifically, the EPP member parties gained ground in Romania, Austria and Sweden, among others, while they fell slightly in Germany, Czechia and Estonia. Overall, the EPP group now stands at 179 seats in the projection’s baseline scenario (+2 compared to March).

S&D losing in Portugal

The centre-left S&D group gained ground in Finland and Lithuania, but lost it slightly in Italy. Additionally, the Latvian S&D member party is now expected to narrowly fail to secure a seat in the European Parliament. However, all these changes are due to fairly minor fluctuations in the polls. More significant are the losses in Portugal, where the Socialists fell further and further behind during the campaign for the national parliamentary elections last week, ultimately achieving an historically poor result.

Overall, the S&D Group drops to 130 seats (–⁠1). Compared to the March projection, this is only a modest decline. Nevertheless, it is also one of the S&D’s worst figures since the previous record low in May 2021.

Renew somewhat stronger again

The liberal-centrist Renew group has recently received good news mainly from the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland and Estonia. In Romania, by contrast, the liberal USR party has weakened in the latest polls – even though its founder, Nicușor Dan (who left the party in 2017 but was still supported by it in the election campaign) won the national presidential election last weekend.

The Renew group is also gaining ground in Greece. In April, the opposition party Kínima Dimokratías (KD), founded just six months earlier, joined the European Democratic Party (EDP) – which, together with the liberal ALDE, is one of the two European parties represented in the European Parliament by the Renew group. As with all EDP member parties, the KD is therefore assigned to Renew in the projection.

With a total of 76 seats (+3), Renew sees the largest increase of all political groups compared to the March projection. However, this is still one of the group’s worst figures of the last ten years. Since mid-2022, Renew has lost around a quarter of its projected seats – more than any other political group during this period.

Greens and Left weaker

The European Greens have remained largely unchanged since March. In Portugal, the Green member party Livre was the only centre-left party to make slight gains over the national parliamentary election campaign. The German Grüne, on the other hand, lost one seat in the projection (albeit only due to minor fluctuations in the polls), and the Slovenian member party would now miss out on entering the European Parliament by a narrow margin. Overall, the Greens therefore fall back to 40 seats in the projection (–⁠1). While this is only a minimal loss compared to March, it is also the group’s worst result since spring 2022.

Somewhat more significant are the losses suffered by the Left group. For example, it is falling behind in Greece, where the former governing party, Syriza, is losing heavily to the non-attached left-wing populist party PE, and has now shrunk to a shadow of its former size. In addition, left-wing parties in the Netherlands and Cyprus have lost the gains they made in the March projection. Overall, the Left group now stands at 49 seats (–⁠3), which is roughly in line with its long-term average of recent years.

PfE and ESN with record figures

On the far-right side of the political spectrum, the different national member parties of the ECR group have recently experienced rather contrasting developments. While the Polish PiS and the Romanian AUR gained support in the run-up to their respective national presidential elections, the Swedish SD and the Finnish PS lost ground, and the ECR member parties in Bulgaria and Luxembourg would not secure any seats in the European Parliament now. Nevertheless, the group’s projected total number of seats remains unchanged at 79 (±⁠0), close to its 2024 election results.

In the far-right group PfE, the Polish member party Konfederacja recently recorded some losses, but these were more than offset by developments in other countries: Portugal’s Chega achieved a historically strong result in the national parliamentary elections, while Latvia’s LPV recently took first place in the national polls. Overall, therefore, the PfE parliamentary group increases slightly and reaches 100 seats (+1) in the projection’s baseline scenario. This is only the second time ever (after December 2024) that the PfE group has reached this symbolic mark.

Finally, the biggest gains on the far right were made by the ESN group, in which the German AfD in particular has made strong advances since the Bundestag elections in February and is now almost on a par with the CDU/CSU (EPP). With a total of 35 seats (+2), the ESN group is the only political group to have gained seats in every projection since the 2024 elections.

Non-attached and “other” parties

There have been only few changes among the non-attached and “other” parties (i.e. parties that are not currently represented in the European Parliament and do not belong to a European party, meaning that they cannot be clearly assigned to a political group).

The most notable development here is the heavy losses sustained by the Romanian far-right parties SOS and POT, neither of which would secure a seat in the European Parliament anymore. This is primarily due to a consolidation of the far-right spectrum in Romania around the PfE member party AUR. Other “other” parties that are no longer represented in the projection include the Bulgarian far-right party MECh and the centre-right parties FD from Romania and Demokrati from Slovenia.

New to the table, however, are:

• Resni.ca from Slovenia, a party founded in 2021 by anti-vaccination activists, which now represents national-populist and Russia-friendly positions and is therefore probably ideologically closest to the ESN group; and
• ALMA from Cyprus, a party launched only this Monday by the former national auditor general, Odysseas Michaelides. ALMA strongly criticises the Cypriot political system, but at the same time represents centrist, pro-European positions that could potentially make it a good fit for the Renew group.

In total, the non-attached parties would now hold 23 seats (–⁠1), while the “other” parties stand at 9 (–⁠2).

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	75	188	80	85	27	30	–
Mar. 25 (B)	52	41	131	73	177	79	99	33	24	11
May 25 (B)	49	40	130	76	179	79	100	35	23	9
May 25 (D)	49	40	132	78	179	82	101	36	23	–
	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
DE	9 Linke 1 Tier	10 Grüne 3 Volt	13 SPD	3 FDP 3 FW	23 Union 1 Familie 1 ÖDP			22 AfD	4 BSW 2 Partei 1 PdF
FR	7 LFI	4 EELV	12 PS	14 RE	11 LR		33 RN
IT	10 M5S 2 SI	3 EV	18 PD	4 IV/+E	7 FI 1 SVP	24 FdI	7 Lega
ES	1 Sumar 3 Pod 1 Bildu	2 Sumar 1 ERC	19 PSOE	1 PNV	22 PP	1 SALF	9 Vox		1 Junts
PL			4 Lewica	2 PL2050	19 KO 2 KP	18 PiS	4 Konf	4 Konf
RO			9 PSD	3 USR 1 PMP	7 PNL	13 AUR
NL	1 SP 1 PvdD	3 GL	4 PvdA	7 VVD 3 D66	4 CDA		8 PVV
BE	3 PTB	1 Groen	2 Vooruit 2 PS	2 MR 2 LE	1 CD&V 1 CSP	4 N-VA	4 VB
CZ		1 Piráti			2 STAN 1 TOP09 1 KDU-ČSL	3 ODS	9 ANO	3 SPD	1 Stačilo
EL	1 Syriza		3 PASOK	1 KD	7 ND	2 EL	1 FL		3 PE 2 KKE 1 NIKI
HU			1 DK		10 TISZA		9 Fidesz	1 MHM
PT		1 Livre	6 PS	1 IL	8 AD		5 Chega
SE	2 V	1 MP	8 S	1 C	5 M	4 SD
AT		2 Grüne	4 SPÖ	2 Neos	5 ÖVP		7 FPÖ
BG			1 BSP	3 PP 1 APS	5 GERB 1 DB			3 V	3 DPS-NN
DK	1 Enhl.	2 SF	4 S	2 V	2 LA 1 K	2 DD	1 DF
SK				4 PS	2 Slov 1 KDH	1 SaS		2 REP	3 Smer 2 Hlas
FI	1 Vas	1 Vihreät	5 SDP	3 Kesk	3 Kok	2 PS
IE	4 SF			4 FF	4 FG					2 SD
HR		1 Možemo	5 SDP		5 HDZ					1 Most
LT		2 DSVL	3 LSDP	1 LS	2 TS-LKD	1 LVŽS				2 NA
LV		1 Prog			1 JV	2 NA 1 LRA	2 LPV			1 ZZS 1 ST!
SI			1 SD	3 GS	4 SDS					1 Res
EE			1 SDE	1 RE 2 KE	2 Isamaa		1 EKRE
CY	1 AKEL		1 DIKO		2 DISY	1 ELAM				1 ALMA
LU		1 Gréng	1 LSAP	2 DP	2 CSV
MT			3 PL		3 PN

Timeline (baseline scenario)

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
25-05-19	49	40	130	76	179	79	100	35	23	9
25-03-24	52	41	131	73	177	79	99	33	24	11
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
25-05-19	49	40	132	78	179	82	101	36	23	–
25-03-24	52	41	132	74	179	82	103	33	24	–
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. For Slovenia, the seat projection assumes that MEP Vladimir Prebilič will run for the Vesna party as in 2024; if polls show values for a hypothetical party of Prebilič’s own, these are attributed to Vesna.

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, 6-16/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
France: national polls, 6/2/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Italy: national polls, 23/4-5/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Spain: national polls, 27/4-9/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Poland: national polls, 7-13/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Romania: national polls, 26/4/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Netherlands: national polls, 12/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, French community: polls for the national parliamentary election in Wallonia, 11/3/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, Dutch community: polls for the national parliamentary election in Flanders, 11/3/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Belgium, German community: European election results, 9/6/2024.
Czechia: national polls, 2-12/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Greece: national polls, 2-15/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Hungary: national polls, 7-18/4/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Portugal: national election results, 18/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Sweden: national polls, 21/4-4/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Austria: national polls, 13/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Bulgaria: national polls, 30/4/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Denmark: national polls, 29/4-11/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Slovakia: national polls, 4/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Finland: national polls, 6/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Ireland: national polls, 23/4-2/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Croatia: national polls, 26/4-1/5/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Lithuania: national polls, 19-29/4/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Latvia: national polls, April 2025, source: Wikipedia.
Slovenia: national polls, 24-28/4/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Estonia: national polls, 15-28/4/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Cyprus: national polls, 11-21/3/2025, source: Wikipedia.
Luxembourg: national polls, 24/4/2024, source: Wikipedia.
Malta: national polls, 8/4/2025, source: Wikipedia.

Pictures: all graphs: Manuel Müller.