European Parliament 2019, Seat Projection [Archive]

[From September 2018 until the elections in May 2019, this page provided a regular seat projection for the European Parliament based on the latest national polls. The open data provided by this page was used by CNBC, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, El País, France Culture, Euractiv, Die Tageszeitung, Tagesspiegel, n-tv, Hürriyet Daily News and other public and private organisations.

This page is not being updated since 27.05.19, but remains online for transparency and archive purposes. More recent analyses will become available soon on other pages of European Elections Stats.]

Current EP political groups:
	Others far left own categorisation [new + non-attached (NI)]	EPP - European People's Party centre right
	GUE-NGL - European United Left/Nordic Green Left far left	ECR - European Conservatives and Reformists right-wing Eurosceptics
	Greens/EFA - Greens / European Free Alliance left	ENF - Europe of Nations and Freedom far right (may be replaced by EAPN after the elections)
	S&D - Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats centre left	EFDD - Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy far right (may disintegrate after the elections)
	ALDE - Alliance of Liberals & Democrats for Europe liberals	Others far right own categorisation [new + non-attached (NI)]
	Others moderates own categorisation [new + non-attached (NI)]
Potential new EP political groups:
	5 Star Movement's Group big tent / anti-establishment
	EAPN - European Alliance of Peoples and Nations far right (alliance initiated by Matteo Salvini)

Explore & use our Open Data Hub

[Update 12:57 CET, 27.05.19] Our latest projections are based on provisional results for the European Parliament elections 2019. The final results will become available here throughout the coming days.

The two key questions for the coming weeks: Which new groups will form? And for how long will the UK remain in the European Parliament? Our scenarios allow you to compare the composition of the European Parliament with/without the UK and with/without possible new groups. All of our data is openly accessible and downloadable in our Open Data Hub.

Feel free to use our data in creative ways - if you do, please reference us. We hope it can contribute towards better informing the general public and generating more interest in the European elections.

1. European Parliament 2019 Seat Projection - without the UK

Projection at national level - click on a member state

Key insights (without the UK)

[Note: the following text is based on our projection from 25.05.19, right before the elections]

1. Far right eurosceptic parties will grow stronger - but not significantly. The rightwing eurosceptic block (ECR, EAPN (ex-ENF) and other far right parties) is projected to only gain around 0.2 percentage points. Within this block, far right populist parties stand to benefit the most (+3.4 percentage points), while more moderate right wing eurosceptics will lose in seat share (-3.2 percentage points). In parallel, the ‘moderate’ center (EPP, S&D, ALDE, Greens, others) is likely to become more fragmented and could lose around -1.06 percentage points. Overall, however, the moderate block is still projected to maintain around 69.5% of the seats in the new European Parliament (see the ‘Block view’ tab of our double pie chart).

2. ALDE (liberals) could increase their share of seats by around 52.7 percent the, since the French "En Marche/Renaissance" will join them. This could be an increase from 8.9% of the total seats in the 2014 European elections to around 13.6% [+4.7 percentage points]. For more information on the European elections in France, we recommend PollsPosition.com.

3. The main centre groups could both lose significantly. S&D (centre left) could see its share of seats decrease by around -22.5 percent - a decrease from 25.43% of total seats in the 2014 European elections to around 19.7% today [-5.7 percentage points]. EPP (centre right) could see its share of seats decrease by -10.4 percent - a decrease from 29.43% of total seats in the 2014 European elections to around 26.4% today [-3.05 percentage points]. The two main groups will therefore probably lose their combined absolute majority (50%) but will still clearly remain the largest groups.

[This text is based on calculations from 25/05/19. If you want to see the exact time when our seat projections were last updated, see the aggregate data files in our Open Data Hub.]

2. European Parliament 2019 Seat Projection - with the UK

Projection at national level - click on a member state

Key changes, while the UK is still part of the European Parliament:

The UK government has officially announced that the United Kingdom will participate in the European elections. We therefore provide an alternative scenario, which includes the UK in the seat projection, based on the latest polls in the UK. This scenario is based on the pre-Brexit seat distribution (751 total seats, 73 for the UK) and strongly differs from the planned Brexit seat redistribution (705 total seats, without the UK)

Key changes include:

1. The UK could shift the European Parliament to the right. With the UK, the right wing Eurosceptic block (ECR, EAPN (ex-ENF) and other far right parties) could win around 23.0% of the seats, compared to 20.2% without the UK. This right wing shift is mainly linked to the projected results of UKIP, the Brexit Party, and the British Conservative Party, which could win around 1, 25 and 8 seats respectively in the European Parliament (see ‘Block view’ tab of our double pie chart).

2. The conservative EPP, the biggest centre-right group, could see its relative seat share decrease from about 26.4% without the UK to 24.0% with the UK, due to the fact that the British Conservative party is not a member of the EPP group but is currently part of the more Eurosceptic ECR group.

[This text is based on calculations from 25/05/19. If you want to see the exact time when our seat projections were automatically updated, see the aggregate data files in our Open Data Hub.]

For how long will the UK remain in the European Parliament?

The UK and the EU recently reached an agreement on extending the Brexit deadline until the 31.10.19. The British government confirmed on 07.05.2019 that the UK will be taking part in the European elections, as the time has run out for the country to leave the EU before the elections.

We continue to provide a projection both with and without the UK, given that it is unclear for how long British MEPs will stay in the European Parliament (EP) after the elections. There is a possibility that the British MEPs will not take their seats in the EP at all, if an agreement is reached before the EP's inaugural session on 02.07.19; they could leave a few months later, once the UK leaves the EU; or in case of a change of government or a second referendum with a pro-EU outcome, they could remain in the EP longer term. We therefore consider a projection without the UK to still be of interest.