Euro election guide – Parliament seat projections

The European Parliament released the second seat projections for the composition of the next Parliament yesterday. The projections are based on a cross-section of national polls.

The set of projections showing what the next chamber would look like were based on national polling data taken up to the end of February 2019. The data is based on a selection of reliable polls conducted by national polling institutes in the Member States and aggregated by Kantar Public on behalf of Parliament.

Who is Kantar Public?

Kantar Public is the European Parliament’s Public Opinion Monitoring Unit and is tasked with allocating the projected seats calculated on the basis of voting intentions polls from each member state to Parliament’s currently existing political groups. founded in 1993, Kantar is the Data Investment Management division of WPP, one of the world’s largest insight, information and consultancy groups. Kantar is currently employing almost 30,000 employees working in 100 countries in various research, insight and consultancy disciplines.

Back to the data

Parties are only allocated to existing political groups or where they are already affiliated to an associated European political party. All new political parties and movements, which have not yet declared their intentions, are categorised as “other”. The next Parliament will have fewer MEPs (705) than the outgoing Parliament (751).

European People’s Party (EPP)

Socialists and Democrats (S&D)

European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)

Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)

The Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA)

European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL)

Europe of freedom and direct democracy (EFDD)

Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF)

Non-attached Members

Others

The winners and losers

According to the figures, the biggest winners are the ENF who will make substantial gains if they can sustain their momentum while ALDE have jumped a little but not enough to make a serious impact. The big losers are the ECR with a drop in 29%, no doubt down to their loses with Brexit.

Who are “others”

Since 2014, new political formations have appeared on national political scenes and are, according to current polling data, in reach of seats in the upcoming elections. As they are not part of any current political group in the EP and if at the same time they are not a member of any European political party, their projected seats are placed in a category called “others”. As we cannot prejudge which group(s) they would choose to be affiliated with after the elections, this category is equally split on the left and on the right of the hemicycle.

The Parliament will be publishing updated projections every two weeks until the end of April and every week during the month of May until election night itself. Initial exit polls will then be published on 26 May, for those countries that conduct them and where voting has finished, from 18.00 and every hour until provisional final results are available from all Member States. We will be working to ensure that regular information and updates are published on our website here for you to review

Voters will be going to the polls between 23 – 26 May to decide Europe’s future.