Europe moving right? Facts and fiction in the European elections
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Published 11 March 2024
Key findings
Political fragmentation is likely to continue in the next European Parliament. The centrist coalition of EPP, S&D and Renew are under pressure and will likely rely on support from other groups for policy-making in the next term.
Polls show the overall parliamentary centre of gravity shifting to the right. Both ECR and ID appear to be gaining ground, which could create the possibility of policy-making ‘over right’ - a rare occurrence in European politics.
However, questions remain around the true strength of the European right. We discuss three reasons to doubt the prevailing narrative around the potential rise of the far-right in the European Parliament: timing, topic, and turnout.
What is at stake?
Figure 1: Current seat composition of the European Parliament
Between the 6th and the 9th of June 2024, voters across the 27 member states of the European Union will head to the polls to elect a new European Parliament. This Parliament will play a crucial role in European politics for the next five years. However, despite its large impact on the Union as a whole, European Parliament elections are notoriously hard to follow, let alone predict. This is because the European elections essentially consist of 27 separate national elections, each with its own contesting parties, dynamics, and peculiarities. Therefore, even though parties run as part of large European parliamentary groups, the issues voters really care about are national rather than European.
To make sense of this pan-European electoral smoothie, let’s start with the composition of the current European Parliament as it nears the end of its term. As Figure 1 illustrates, the centre-right EPP is currently the largest parliamentary group with 177 MEPs. In the current parliament, policy-making has often relied on a coalition between the EPP, centre-left S&D (141 MEPs) and liberal Renew (102 MEPs). To prop up their majority on specific bills, this coalition has occasionally also relied on support from the 72 Green members. The remaining groups have played a smaller role in policy-making. These are the conservative ECR, far-right ID, and The Left. Non-aligned MEPs are classified as ‘non-inscrits’ (NI).
Policy-making dynamics in the next parliament will depend heavily on which potential coalitions of groups will be able to reach a majority. Given that the parliament will expand from 705 to 720 seats, the majority threshold will be 361 seats. With that in mind, there are three key coalitions to watch:
The centre: Much depends on whether the parties supporting policy-making in the current parliament (EPP, S&D, and Renew) will retain their majority and, if so, by how much. Voting cohesion and coalition discipline is notoriously low in the European Parliament. As a result, a slim centrist majority would need to rely on support from other groups, most likely the Greens and ECR. In this scenario, policy-making is likely to be difficult and time-consuming, given the constant need to build alternating majorities on different issues with one of these groups. However, should the centrist three be able to expand their power and win a safe majority, this would create significantly easier routes to a parliamentary majority and facilitate easier policy-making. This option closely reflects the status quo in the Parliament.
The left: Without a safe majority in the centre, it is likely that policy-making will rely on (informal) agreements between the mentioned three centrist parties and support parties on the flanks. As in the current parliament, the Greens could fulfil the role of support party after the election, specifically for legislative dossiers where the centrist three are reluctant to seek support on the right. Given current polling, it is unlikely that the left will be able to do more than ‘just’ prop up the centrist majority. A left-wing coalition - with the S&D, Renew, the Greens, and the Left - is currently a long way from the majority threshold.
The right: Unlike the left, it is possible that the European right will be able to offer an alternative path to a majority after the elections. If a coalition of EPP, Renew, and ECR reaches 361 seats, this will increase the bargaining power of the EPP which would be freed of its sole reliance on the S&D. However, a formal ‘governing’ coalition between the three remains unlikely. Significant policy differences exist between the ECR and Renew, suggesting that policy-making over right (if possible) is likely to take place on an ad hoc basis.
Thus, while the current core coalition of EPP, S&D, and Renew is very likely to continue to drive policy-making in the next Parliament, the results of the election crucially determine their bargaining position and their reliance on partners on the left and right respectively. The next section explores existing seat projections for the next European Parliament, including Stack’s own.
2. What is the state of play?
Figure 2: Stack’s European Parliament seat forecast per 5 February 2024
European Parliament seat forecasting is complicated by the lack of EU-wide polling on how citizens intend to vote at the next European elections. Some polls are available for the larger member states, but we are left in the dark for most smaller European member states. For this reason, Stack has developed its own model. This model takes in national polling in each of the 27 European member states, adjusts it based on the expected party-level differences in turnout between national and European elections, and predicts how many MEPs each party is likely to obtain in the next European elections.
Our predictions are summarised in Figure 2 and compared to the current composition of the European parliament. Overall, our estimates suggest further fragmentation in the next parliament. Within the context of an overall expansion of the number of parliamentary seats from 705 to 720, the EPP is forecasted to remain the largest party with 181 seats. However, its two partners in the ‘Ursula coalition’ - S&D and Renew - would currently lose 3 and 19 seats respectively. This would reduce the total number of seats for this coalition to 402 - a sizable majority but less comfortable than in the current parliamentary term. Meanwhile, the European left also struggles in these predictions, with the Greens losing 15 seats and The Left losing an additional seven. By contrast, the groups on the right - the ECR and ID - are set to gain 17 and 27 seats respectively.
Several other organisations have also published regular parliamentary seat forecasts. These are summarised in Figure 3. Please note that projections by POLITICO Europe have been excluded, as these include new parties in a separate “new” category, limiting comparability. While Stack’s predictions are not an outlier, there are several important similarities and differences to point out. First, the two trends noted earlier - a weakened left and a strengthened right flank - are reflected in every forecast. Second, there is some disagreement on the respective strength of the flanks, specifically when it comes to the Greens and far-right ID. Stack’s predictions show a significantly stronger Green faction and a weaker far-right than other pollsters. These differences could have resulted from the fact that Stack’s model incorporates a turnout estimate per party, which could positively affect Green parties while negatively affecting the far-right. Section three will delve deeper into this question on turnout.
Figure 3: Stack seat predictions compared to other seat forecasts
What do these projections tell us about the probabilities of the different election outcomes mentioned in section 1? Based on current polling, a small EPP/S&D/Renew majority is most likely. With a 40-seat majority, this group will regularly have to seek support from the left or the right to patch up holes left by issue-specific MEP defections. A slight majority will mean that this coalition will regularly have to engage in time-consuming negotiations on a variety of thorny dossiers. This negatively impacts their ability to pass legislation. But the second most likely outcome is a safe EPP/S&D/Renew majority, which would expedite policy-making significantly compared to the first scenario. This scenario would become possible if this coalition secures at least another 10-20 seats. A coalition over right is less likely but not impossible. EPP/Renew/ECR currently poll at approximately 350 seats, and would need another 10 seats to secure a minimum-winning coalition. Even if this occurred, it is unlikely that these three would be able to dominate European day-to-day policy-making with such a small majority.
3. Three reasons to doubt ‘the rise of the far-right’
Figure 4: Stack’s monthly European Parliament seat estimates per group over time
After a far-right victory in the Dutch elections and with soaring polling numbers for the German AfD and the French RN, the possibility of the next European Parliament lurching to the right is the main story in this electoral cycle. ECFR recently estimated that if the European Parliament elections were held today, the far-right ID group would win 98 seats. Der Foederalist - a European politics blog sharing regular seat predictions - even had ID on 108 seats in their dynamic forecast in January 2024. This would mean that ID would become the third largest group in Parliament and a significant force in European politics. Aside from a symbolic victory for the right, this would also represent a real increase in bargaining power in legislative negotiations.
But how accurate is this narrative around the rise of the far-right in European politics? While we concede that the far-right is gaining in strength relative to previous European Parliament elections, there are three reasons to doubt that ID will win enough votes to become the third largest group in Parliament. These reasons can be summarised with three T’s: timing, topic, and turnout.
Firstly, with regard to timing, it is possible that current projections simply reflect a temporary polling high for the far-right that will slump come June. Notably, the rise of the ID group in polling projections was disproportionately driven by three national parties: Le Pen’s RN in France, AfD in Germany, and the PVV in the Netherlands. Dependency on these three creates a risk for ID. Should the national fortunes of these parties grind to a halt, ID’s potential gains in the Parliament would be under threat. This is a real possibility. While Le Pen’s polling numbers are solid (currently leading Macron by a vote share margin of 9%), voters on the French right have previously been a volatile group. It is not at all certain that these voters will truly pick RN as their new political home by June. In Germany, the AfD’s polling high has already come under pressure after the establishment of Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party BSW. Since BSW’s inclusion in national polling in early January, the AfD’s predicted vote share has dropped from 22% to 19%. Lastly, the Dutch PVV is currently enjoying a post-election honeymoon after its surprise victory in the November elections. However, it is far from certain that they will be able to sustain their polling numbers, which are currently higher than any Dutch party has polled in the last decade, until June.
Figure 5: Perceptions of importance and awareness of European elections among likely German voters grouped by vote intention in the next European Parliament elections
Secondly, the topic of the elections - Europe - presents a potential challenge to far-right parties in their campaigns. Over previous decades, many far-right parties have struggled to mobilise their electorate when it comes to European elections. In a recent Stack poll in Germany, we found that Germans who (claim to) intend to vote for the AfD in June were also less likely to keep up with current affairs in European politics and less likely to find the act of voting in European Parliament elections important, as illustrated in Figure 5. These differences are a worrying sign for the AfD, who will have to spend more time and resources than mainstream parties convincing their voters about the importance of the European topics at hand.
These difficulties are closely linked to the final overarching challenge for far-right parties: turnout. Historically, far-right parties have often struggled to mobilise their voters in European elections relative to elections at the national level. One useful metric that illustrates this problem is the difference between the actual number of votes that far-right parties have gotten in previous European elections and their national polling numbers on that same day. Most far-right parties underperform their national numbers in European elections. In May 2019, the AfD was polling at 13% in national polls, but only won 11% of the vote in the European elections on the same day. Similarly, the Dutch PVV won 3.5% of the vote in the last European elections, while polling on 6% of the national vote. With turnout issues plaguing this group of parties in particular, there are clear reasons to doubt whether current European seat forecasts - which are based on national polling - truly reflect the mobilisation challenges that far-right parties will face.
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