EP elections 2014 - Results Thread

[justfollowingtheelections]

The exit polls should be out anytime now. CDA and D66 are apparently fighting for first place

The results:

CDA 15.4 (5)
D66 15.3 (4)
PVV 12.7 (3)
VVD 12.1 (3)
PvdA 9.3 (2)

Can't find anything on how the other parties did.

[justfollowingtheelections]

The full results of the exit poll.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Yep, this is the definitive poll



And the seats by party:


I'm happy for the animal rights party winning a seat.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Well yes, I'm actually surprised they appear to be doing so bad in the polls.  I thought they were going to win first place.  I guess some people are ashamed to admit they would vote for them?

[justfollowingtheelections]

Polling results for all parties in Greece:

SYRIZA 26-30
ND 23-27
GD 8-10
Elia 7-9
Potami 5-7
KKE 5-7
ANEL 3.5-5
DIMAR 1.5-2.5
LAOS 1.5-2.5
Others 9-10.5

[justfollowingtheelections]

So is PASOK just...gone, or has it been subsumed into Elia for these purposes, or what?

PASOK still exists.  Elia is an alliance of PASOK and other center-left parties.  They did surprisingly well so who knows they might stick with the Elia name since PASOK is toxic. 

[justfollowingtheelections]

Counting pretty quick here and if the Frankfurt trends would translate to national results - but I guess they don't; there are a few relevant local factors after all - then the SPD should have a much better night, and the CDU a far worse, than what the exit polls show. As in, with a third of the city in the SPD is leading... and it's not that the Greens and Left are doing that badly, either. That shouldn't translate to that much of a CDU-CSU national lead, really.)

Just for hilarity, here's my precinct
turnout 383 voters or 30.3% (plus postal voters that is) of which one invalid
SPD 107 votes, Greens 84, CDU 75, Left 47, AfD 21, FDP 18, Pirates 14, PARTEI 10.

I'm one of the ten, dithered between that and Pirate. ZDF now says they may make it into the European Parliament. (Because noone can manage to spend the kind of money the EP pays its MPs in the long run, the PARTEI has nominated 60 candidates all promising to resign after a month. Gotta love national PR with no threshold. We'll get many, many joke MEPs from Germany this year.)

NPD is apparently winning a seat too.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Latest exit poll from Greece:

SYRIZA 26.7
ND 22.8
GD 9.3
Elia 9.1
Potami 6.7
KKE 6
ANEL 3.4

LAOS 2.8
European Citizens (ALDE) 1.4
DIMAR 1.3
Bridges (ALDE) 1
ANTARSYA (anti-capitalists) 1

Seats per party:
SYRIZA 7
ND 6
GD 2
Elia 2
Potami 2
KKE 1
ANEL 1

EUL-NGL 8, EPP 6, S&D 2, ECR 1.  It remains to be seen which group Potami will join.

ETA:  My mistake, these are actually the first official results.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Spain (97.9% counted)

PP 26% (-16.2%) 16 (-8) (EPP)

PSOE 23% (-15.8%) 14 (-9) (S&D)

IU-ICV 10% (+6.3%) 6 (+4) ( 5 GUE-NGL, 1 Greens/EFA)

PODEMOS 7.95% 5 (+5)!!! (GUE-NGL)

UPyD 6.5% (+3.6%) 4 (+3) (NI)

CiU+PNV+CC 5.45% (+0.35%) 3 (nc)

ERC 4.1% 2 (+1) (Greens/EFA)

Cs 3.2% 2 (+2) (NI)

EHBildu+BNG 2.1% 1 (+1)

Compromís+Equo 1.9% 1 (+1) (Greens/EFA)

Very nice results.  I'm happy for PODEMOS

[justfollowingtheelections]

Jobbik wins 2nd place in Hungary.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Sinn Fein came in first in the Republic? I'm seeing articles that suggest it but they all beat around the bush. What's going on?

They were leading in the polls before the election.  It wouldn't be that big of a surprise

[justfollowingtheelections]

Die PARTEI won a seat!

....what?

Voting for a joke party is the most stupid thing anyone can do.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Will the far right get his group?

I guess the UKIP and Afd will never caucuse with them.

FN, FPÖ, PVV, VB, LN and SD would join them, but problem is to get additional seat. They'll need to choice to accept one of far-far-right people (NPD, Jobbik or Golden Dawn) or try to take ANEL from ECR or accepting DUP.

ANEL will not join them.  This is the MEP they elected:
Marias Epaminondas (Notis)
Professor


RESEARCH INTERESTS
Globalization
European Economic Integration
Institutions of the European Union
Theories of European Integration
European Citizenship
Immigration-Racism
Hellenic-Turkish Relations

http://economics.soc.uoc.gr/en/content/marias-epaminondas-notis

He is very pro-Europe and in favor of European integration and he might not even join ECR (he might go with ALDE instead).  

Edit:  Apparently I made a mistake, as Marias was narrowly defeated.  But I would be very surprised if ANEL joined a FN-led group.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Podemos and their young leader Pablo Iglesias confirmed they are joining GUE-NGL.


http://www.publico.es/politica/523095/podemos-acuerda-con-tsipras-entrar-en-el-grupo-de-la-izquierda-unitaria-de-la-eurocamara

According to the above article GUE-NGL will get all 6 of the IU seats, but perhaps the writer made a mistake.
I'm interested in seeing whether the success of Podemos and IU and the failure of PSOE can lead to changes in Spanish politics.

It is quite interesting that of the 50-51 seats GUE-NGL appears to be getting, 44-45 are in Eurozone countries (the other 6 are 3 in the Czech Rep, 2 in Sweden and 1 in N. Ireland and there is also a Bulgarian MEP but she was elected in Greece with SYRIZA) where they easily win 3rd place.

Also, the bios of the Greek MEPs (I couldn't help but laugh when I read the bios of the ND MEPs):

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http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.politics&id=1970

[justfollowingtheelections]

It might interest some of you that Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson said on TV today that the party would "only" consider co-operating with UKIP and the Danish People's Party, whatever that means. Of course, he could always renege on that - which might be more likely than not.

The Sweden Democrats are between a rock and a hard place - they're too "dirty" for the softer, more populist parties such as UKIP and the True Finns, but aren't enthusiastic about being connected to Front National and the PVV. Their Youth League, which is more nationalist, would however love to see SD co-operate with Wilders and Le Pen.

In the end, they might end up outside a group, which would essentially eliminate their influence as their candidates aren't exactly strong enough to make much noise on their own.

I really don't think UKIP will be able to form a group, especially if they lose Lega Nord and the True Finns.  The problem with nationalists is that it's really difficult for them to work with each other.  The ones that are most worried about their image will join Cameron's group, the ones that couldn't care less about their image will join Le Pen's group, while GD, NPD and Jobbik will sit on the side wondering why no one wants them.  It will be rather strange if personalities such as Farage or Grillo fail to find a group, but I can see it happening.

Huffington post by the way has a ranking of Europe's most dangerous far-right parties.

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[justfollowingtheelections]

The 2 Potami MEPs are joining the S&D group.

http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.politics&id=1973

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[justfollowingtheelections]

PASOK did surprisingly well, all things considering.

You know what would be cool? Direct Presidential elections for the EU president. None of this stupid horse-trading and uncertainty.

Who knows, maybe we can bring in a European electoral collage. That's always fun to watch in the US.

I know some disagree here but I think interest in the elections would be a lot higher if people could vote for European parties.  Juncker for example says that he won the election which is funny because if you ask the average Fidesz voter in Hungary, they probably don't even know who Juncker is.
It would also be interesting if the top parties had more credible candidates.  Merkel vs Renzi would draw a lot more interest than Juncker vs Schulz.

[justfollowingtheelections]

The Animal Protection Party in Germany is joining GUE-NGL

[justfollowingtheelections]

I tried to summarize the results based on what I have read here and on other websites regarding new parties and the groups they are joining and this is what I came up with.  Feel free to ask questions or make corrections:


If this is correct then Le Pen would be unable to form a group since she needs partners from 6 other countries and so far she only seems to have 5.

[justfollowingtheelections]

To Comrade Sibboleth and EPG:  Don't you think the people should know what they're voting for?  Shouldn't the ballots at least have the names of the European parties their MEPs will join once elected?  Do Forza Italia voters for example know they're voting for EPP?  It just seems that voters are being deceived which contributes to the feeling that Eurocrats don't want the people to know what is really happening in Brussels.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Whoever ends up commission president is going to be a massive compromise. Taking party seat numbers from euobserver.com:

EPP - 213
S&D - 191
ALDE - 64
Others - 64
Greens/EFA - 52
ECR - 46
GUE/NGL - 42
Non-Iscrits - 41
EFD - 38

There's no ready made coalition that can get up to 376 votes. Doesn't help that people with no party affiliation hold at the moment 105 seats. But even if EPP and S&D formed a grand coalition, that's only 404 votes and these are parties in the very loosest sense of the word, a few "backbencher" political parties can go against their party and vote against commission president.

These numbers are not accurate since they don't include new parties.  Wikipedia seems to be more accurate:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2014#Group_reshuffling

If I had to guess I would say the new EU Commission President will be a current head of government that is an EPP member.

[justfollowingtheelections]

So, what are the 2 most likely parties to join the far-right EAF group, besides FN/FPÖ/PVV/LN/VB ?

KNP (Poland) and ANEL (Greece) ?

It won't be ANEL.  They are still counting the votes for the individual candidates in Greece and it's still not clear who ANEL will elect (they only won one seat).  It looks like it's between two candidates:
-Notis Marias who is a federalist university professor (he teaches classes on European integration), who at the same time initiated talks between ANEL and Cameron's ECR group.  He has also been pushing for closer cooperation with SYRIZA.  He's apparently all over the place but there's no way he would join Le Pen's group.
- Giorgos Romanias, a labor economist and clearly a leftist (ANEL has allied with several small leftist anti-austerity groups).

[justfollowingtheelections]

Grillo has applied to join the Greens (something I predicted awhile ago)
http://euobserver.com/tickers/124489

[justfollowingtheelections]

I wonder what Farage will do now that Cameron and Le Pen stole all his allies/potential allies.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Grillo has applied to join the Greens (something I predicted awhile ago)
http://euobserver.com/tickers/124489

I'm not sure they'd have him, there are two or three pirates though

The Greens have indeed rejected the application:
http://euobserver.com/eu-elections/124495

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