EP elections 2014

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The state of Ireland, like Northern Ireland, uses STV in 3-4 seat constituencies, so its seats will not be as proportional to first-preference vote as the spreadsheet seems. Furthermore, in this candidate-centred electoral system, European Parliament results often differ from national polls. Compare the Irish EP and local elections in 2009, or note the Socialist Party EP result. I guess 4 EPP, 4 ALDE, 3 GUE in the south of Ireland. However, there have been no polls, not that they would be worth much.

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As I see it, as an outsider, the parties emerged from distinct contexts: Ciutadans can be seen much more as Catalans supporting a Spanish identity, while UPyD is an explicitly national party.

Rivera (Ciutadans) had a history in its Catalan-only days of making electoral pacts with other parties, including local parties in the rest of Spain (not to mention Libertas in 2009), whereas UPyD is much more intransigent about its independence.

More importantly, Rivera and Diez (UPyD) each want to be leader of a big popular anti-system movement. I see them each as little more than one-man or one-woman bands with weak ideological content other than what a British observer would call unionism.

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Ideologically, the AfD would seem a good fit for the Tories, ODS, etc.

They would also be less likely to end up with strange bedfellows after the election.

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I hope AfD goes wirth Tories! Might UPyD try to get something togheter with M5S? Like the radical group in 1994-1999?

UPyD are pro-EU federalism, whereas M5S are anti-euro and so forth.

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Thats true. But if M5S and UPyD can not align, i do not think an alternative left group can be formed.

No, you're right, probably not. UPyD has more outside options that M5S. For instance, they'll probably have more MEPs to offer ALDE than the current regionalist parties. M5S is rare as an anti-EU party that is neither far left nor far right. They may end up as non-inscrits, but would they care?

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Ireland's Fine Gael has had some selection conferences.

In South, which includes Munster and south Leinster, they will run Seán Kelly MEP and Senator Deirdre Clune, each from Munster. They also wanted the former Irish Farmers' Association head John Bryan, who would appeal to south Leinster, but he refused to run on a three-person ticket since they will realistically win only one or two seats. Fine Gael are now seeking a south Leinster candidate to be added to the ticket by national HQ.

Midlands-North West is a misleading name because it is split 50-50 between north Leinster, including Dublin commuters, and Connacht-Ulster. It won't be much like the old North West constituency. They selected Mairead McGuinness MEP (currently East) and Jim Higgins MEP (currently North West) and they probably won't add another candidate as their geographic spread is pretty good. McGuinness is the only current candidate from Leinster, apart from the Green Party's man; she is also extremely popular among farmers in general. Higgins will have a bigger problem, as the three North West MEPs are now effectively fighting for two seats in their heartland, if we accept that Sinn Féin will definitely take a seat in a constituency that combines their strongest areas.

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In the Northern Ireland constituency, it is likely to be 1 Sinn Féin (GUE), 1 Democratic Unionist (non-inscrit), 1 Ulster Unionist (ECR) as before. The European Parliament electoral system, in the north as in the south, is STV.

There is a tiny chance that the UUP could lose to the SDLP (S&D), but that would be contingent on strong performances by other unionists such as the Traditional Unionist Voice (more extreme than the DUP) and the NI21 (more moderate than the UUP). "Other unionists" also include even smaller groups like the Conservatives, UKIP and the flag protesters.

The UUP could also lose votes to Alliance (not technically unionists but almost entirely confined to Protestant areas), though the flag protests may not help Alliance, and their candidate has been subjected to online racial abuse.

This loss to the SDLP would happen if the minor unionists took lots of UUP votes and didn't transfer onwards and Alliance transferred relatively strongly to SDLP. I would put the probability of this outcome at about 5-10%, as unionist voters do tend to transfer to their candidates across the ballot paper.

SDLP won't take Sinn Féin's seat either way, as SF are bullet-proof (sorry).

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The German CDU is now officially backing Jean-Claude Juncker.

I suppose this was inevitable after Angela Merkel expressed such support. This doesn't really bind them to support him after the EP election, though.

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The European Parliament can veto and sack the Commission. It's not a parliamentary government, but it's not exactly powerless either.

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Danish poll by A&B Analysis for altinget.dk

DF (EFD) 23.3 % 3 seats
Social Democrats (S&D) 22.6 % 3 seats
Liberals (ALDE) 22.5 % 3 seats
Social Liberals (ALDE) 8.4 % 1 seat
People's movement against the EU (GUE-NGL) 8.3 % 1 seat
SF (Greens) 6.4 % 1 seat
Conservatives (EPP) 6.1 % 1 seat
Liberal Alliance (probably ECR) 2.4 % 0 seats

Wow. Has DF ever won a national election before?

Why are SF not GUE-NGL? Is not being far-left part of their identity?

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Thank you.

I guess the combined ALDE vote is still bigger than EFD, small "hurrah".

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The problem, for the EPP in particular, is that many of the best EC President candidates are serving heads of government, so they can't be seen to seek or campaign for another office from now until May.

In the English-speaking world, Juncker is associated with left-wing Eurofederalism (relative to the typical English-speaking country) and Schulz is a non-entity. Neither seems the right choice to keep the UK in the union.

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The problem, for the EPP in particular, is that many of the best EC President candidates are serving heads of government, so they can't be seen to seek or campaign for another office from now until May.

In the English-speaking world, Juncker is associated with left-wing Eurofederalism (relative to the typical English-speaking country) and Schulz is a non-entity. Neither seems the right choice to keep the UK in the union.

I should have linked Ed Miliband's and Douglas Alexander's opposition to Schulz: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/01/labour-european-commission-president-martin-schulz

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the FPÖ does currently better in national polls because of the HYPO-bank debate

Amazing.

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It's a race among Conservatives, Plaid and UKIP to finish second and third in Wales, because Labour will win 2 out of 4 seats if they get twice the share of the fourth-place party, which is very likely. Polls suggest Plaid will lose out. The BNP got a surprisingly high vote in 2009 which will probably transfer straight to UKIP, propelling them over Plaid to land in third place.

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In Midlands-North West (Ireland), the Fianna Fáil (ALDE) MEP, Pat the Cope Gallagher, is annoyed at having a running mate. Because he thinks it's very unlikely that they can win two out of four seats in their historic heartland. How times change.

Gallagher's running-mate is from Leinster: a senator, former TD, and was a candidate in the most recent by-election. As discussed before, Leinster is half of this constituency, whereas their incumbent is based far to the north-west.

The articles reckon McGuinness (FG, EPP) and Carthy (SF, GUE/NGL) will win a seat too. They also tip Harkin (Independent, ALDE), which seems optimistic to me: established independents don't always do well when their constituencies are redrawn to include lots of new voters, who cast their lower preferences for candidates from the same party or region.

In Northern Ireland, the Alliance (ALDE) candidate says she favour a united Ireland, and unionists jump all over her. She won't win the EP seat now, but it might help her beat the SDLP (S&D) in Belfast South in 2015...

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Nope, she wouldn't have. She will do worse now.

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Gosh, we go to all this effort to learn the party letters, then some pollster uses R instead of B and so on.

Does that Austrian poll say that 50% of working-class voters will choose the FPÖ?

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The Galway Advertiser thinks the European Parliament means retirement from Irish frontline politics (tell that to Simon Coveney of Fine Gael (EPP), favourite to succeed Enda Kenny). The article is a good primer as to why the EP is viewed more cynically in Ireland these days: the declining relevance of CAP and structural funds vis-a-vis economic bodies controlled by the Council and Commission, the marginal status of many candidates, and frequent use of the substitute list.

Some lessons in PR-STV: Don't talk up your chances; if people think you're safe, they'll try to elect another candidate they like. Don't attack other candidates if you are doing OK on first preferences and need their transfers. Do attack them if you need first preferences to stay in the game long enough to get transfers.

Fianna Fáil (ALDE-somehow): the main leadership rival is making the Dublin election a leadership test.

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Are there likely to be any seat changes in Belgium, as opposed to vote changes? Who would lose out if the various Greens advance?

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If the FDP wins no MEP, it's game over and time to infiltrate liberalism into the C_U.

As for M5S: A political group in the European Parliament needs 25 MEPs in 1/4 of the member states (i.e. 7 member states). Finding 7 countries with non-right-wing Eurosceptic movements in the EP could be a challenge. It would be a lot easier to join one of the existing groups, probably either the Greens-EFA or UKIP's Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Wikipedia lists EFD's members as:

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The problem is not so much that Wilders/Le Pen will win these parties over, and more that polls suggest they could lose their MEPs in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia. In that case, they would need to find MEPs from two more countries. Ironically, M5S wouldn't help, because the Italian part of the EFD is already one of the most likely to survive!

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There are actually loads of ALDE commissioners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commissioner#Portfolios

The Commissioners from Estonia, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Cyprus, Belgium, Ireland and Sweden are from ALDE. It's remarkable over-representation compared to the EP because of the prominence of the liberals in government around 2009.

As for Schulz/Juncker as EC President, that's probably not the choice that will face the EP after Merkel decides whom she really wants.

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ALDE also contains parties like the Estonian Centre Party, the Labor Party (Lithuania) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (Bulgaria). The Estonian Centre Party is the most left-wing of the major Estonian parties.

Any group that contains both the Estonian Centre and Reform parties is quite broad-minded! Of course, all the Europarties are broad alliances. UKIP is very different from LAOS, the CDA from Forza Italia, the Italian Democrats from the PS, etc. etc.

And looking across the continent, the right-wing parties in left-wing countries often legislate more left-wing policies than self-proclaimed social democrats in other countries. I'm looking at Belgium versus the UK, let's say.

These broad groups need to exist for anything to get done. Otherwise you'd have 700-800 agendas trying to take precedence at once.

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How about if people vote for the groups not the party. So, rather than voting for, say, a Labour candidate to join the SandD coalition; we straight out vote for "Social Democrats".

That would hopefully remove the situation whereby people use the EU election to punish their own government.

That's already possible... in fact, partisan elections in Europe from parish council to European Parliament could each have different party systems, in principle. It doesn't happen in the EP for the same reason it doesn't normally happen at any other level: national parties have stronger brands and campaigning machines, the top politicians want to join them, and very often the big parties have enough control of the electoral system and public funding to frustrate competitors. Pure Europarties, like small national parties, lack machines, money and personalities.

As for Belgium, the British (or Estonians) would see it as left-wing Flanders versus quasi-Marxist Wallonia. I mean more that if the "political spectrum/compass" were a true model, the Benelux Christian centre-right would be in a Europarty to the left of Ed Miliband's Labour. But of course politics is more about leadership, sentiment and common values rather than ideal policy sets. UK Labour and the French Socialists are miles (kilometres) apart on policy. So are Fine Gael and Fidesz. It's not just ALDE.

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As for Schulz/Juncker as EC President, that's probably not the choice that will face the EP after Merkel decides whom she really wants.

But surely the SPD must have something to say as well. If Schulz can collect just something resembling a majority, the SPD will be quite the laughing stock if they just allowed Merkel and/or some of the other big countries to straight out reject him.

Nobody will be close to a majority in the Parliament; any candidate relying on Tsirpas to vote "yes" for them should think again. There will be some votes where the non-inscrits block everyone, then the EPP/S&D grand coalition will use their small majority to find a compromise candidate that suits both parties and the big member states. Schulz may well get it, but Juncker won't once the EPP heads of state come out to play, and the partisan nominations in a quasi-parliamentary system is a bit of a farce.