EU elections predictions!

[freek]

NETHERLANDS   28

PPE CDA              7
PSE PVDA            8
ELDR  VVD + D66 7
GUE  SP                2
GR   GROENLINKS 2
OTHERS CU+SGP  2

Although I agree in general with the scores you give here, I think I have some remarks about your predictions for the Netherlands.

1. The total number of seats is 27 the next period.

2. I think you overestimate the VVD+D66 score, while you underestimate the CDA-score and CU-SGP-score. 5 years ago the CDA was hugely unpopular, but became the largest party, just for one reason, the turnout was extremely low,  even under 30%. The CDA, CU, and SGP-voters are extremely faithful in voting, the turnout under CU and SGP-voters was 70% 5 years ago. The VVD was back then a lot higher in the polls than the CDA, but scored only 6 seats, the CDA 9. Another difference with then is a large PvdA-party, but I think they mostly attract votes from the Greens, just as the Socialist Party.

3. I miss two other parties in your list, the List Pim Fortuyn, which takes a seat maybe, and the Partij voor de Dieren (Animals' Party, really they exist), which might also score a seat. They became quite close to win a seat the last parliamentary elections last year, and they might win a seat now, because the importance of European elections is lower, and people might vote for smaller parties.

My prediction is

CDA            8
PvdA           7
VVD+D66    4+1
GroenLinks  2
SP               2
CU/SGP       2
LPF             1

Maybe CDA 7, VVD 5, maybe also the PvdD 1 seat. Prediction is quite hard with this low number of seats, it is a lot easier when there are 150. .

[freek]

I strongly agree about the calvinist parties. If I observed correctly their share of vote decreased but amount of votes increased beacause of higher turnout.

Yeah. And at the last parliamentary elections they lost 2 seats to the CDA, because their voters preferred a larger CDA (and the initiative in coalition talks) above their own party. The same was seen for PvdA en SP. Now, voters will return to their own party, because the size of PvdA and CDA in the European Parliament is not relevant for the formation of a European Commission.

I think D66 would be very lucky when winning more than one seat. They don't have many faithful voters, and in the polls for the national parliament they score 6-7 seats for about 3 years now. In 1999 that was 10-14, I think.

[freek]

Go D66! Too bad they´re polling so poorly. If social-liberals don´t have place in a country like Netherlands, I guess we´re screwed...

Social-liberals do have a place, both in the PvdA and the VVD. D66 is crushed in between them, because there is some overlap between PvdA and VVD in their programs. If there is more polarisation, D66 will be seen as the "reasonable alternative" for social liberals, and they will rise again.

[freek]

Did Pim Fortun's (brief glimmer of a) party ever join one of the EU coalitions?

I emailed them to ask, I hope they will answer my question.

[freek]

Poll by Interview/NSS

36% of the Dutch know that there are elections this year, and one third of them (12% in total!) knowing that these elections are for the European Parliament.

Hardly anyone knows when these elections are, 10% said "somewhere in June", 5% said "10th of June", the correct answer.

66% said they plan to vote, but 5 years ago only 29% of the electorate voted.

The parties (skewed because a lot of people who say they intend to vote, won't vote)

PvdA (Labour Party) 33%
CDA (Christian Democrates) 22%
VVD (Right-liberal) 21%
GroenLinks (Greens) 6%
SP (Socialists) 5%
D66 (Left-liberal) 4%
CU (Calvinist) 3%
LPF 2%
SGP (Christian fundamentalist) 2%

[freek]

FDP: supporters give very low priority to EU elections and they are not needed to form a coalition. Hence it's likely that they miss the 5%-threshold

Again.

[freek]

Last week there was a funny incident during the registration of the party lists for the elections. The law stipulates that every candidate has to supply a copy of an ID (drivers license, passport) to the Election Commission.

One of the candidates (Maarten 't Hart, a famous writer in the Netherlands) of the Animal's Party couldn't do that however. He is principally against an ID, he doesn't have a drivers license (simpy because he couldn't pass the exam, even after trying for 10 times or so. ), and he doesn't want to have a passport. He tried it with supplying a copy of his membership card of the local library, but the Election Commission didn't accept that. . 't Hart then went to the Supreme Court, but they said that the Election Commission was right. It gave a lot of free publicity for his party however.

[freek]

I'm sorry, I don't follow. "It is presumably a European dependency" leads me to think it is very pro-EU. "towing the UK into Chesapeake Bay" leads me to think it is very Atlanticist. Both of these things are belied by its name. In short, you will have to explain in more detail. And why have I never heard of this party before?

UKIP, the UK Independence Party, are the most eurosceptic party representing the UK in the European Parliament. So they are against any influence of the European Union on British politics. Their final goal is to leave the European Union. And you might have never heard of them before, because they don't have any seats in the House of Commons, because of the used FPTP-system.

The line "It is presumably a European dependency" is the UKIP's way to describe the current situation of the member states in the European Union, and the UKIP wants to change that.

[freek]

JL is Junilistan, new party that's EU-critical. Wants to remain a member of the EU, but roll back the EU bureaucracy, etc.

Do they have any relation to the Danish party Junibevaegelsen, which is also EU-critical?

[freek]

"presumably" was the wrong word...
Is "supposedly" better? Or "according to them"?

Something like: "The UKIP supposes that the UK is an European dependency"? Yeah, that sounds better to me.

Sometimes I also have some problems which word to choose. A disadvantage of not being a native speaker. .

[freek]

The European Commission and the Dutch government have a conflict about the time when the official result of the elections are announced, since our elections are already June 10th. The Dutch government planned to announce the official results June 15th, as the EU requested; but single municipalities are allowed to announce their results already on the evening of June 10th. So it is possible to calculate the result by yourselve. . And the Commission doesn't like that.

[freek]

Predictions for 2004 (24 seats)
(13 for NL and 11 for FR)


VLD: 1 or 2
MR: 3
CVP+ NVA (ex-VU): 4 or 5
PSC: 2
PS: 4 or 5
SP+ Spirit (ex-VU): 3
ECOLO: 1 or 2
Agalev: 0 or 1
VB: 3
FN: 0 or 1

CVP is renamed CD&V now, PSC is CDH. .

Compared to the national elections of last year, that is a huge win for the CD&V, and a huge loss for the VLD. Interesting.

For which party is the seat for the German community? The christian democrats again?

[freek]

Latest opinion poll in The Netherlands (not exact number of seats, because those are hard to predict because of the Dutch electoral system and the expected low turnout):

Total 27 seats

CDA 9-10 seats (EPP)
Pvda 6-7 (PES)
VVD 5-6 (ELDR)
CU/SGP 2-3 (EDD)
SP 1-2 (UEL/NGL)
GL 1-2 (Greens)
Animal's Party 0-1
Europe Transparent 0-1
D66 0-1 (ELDR)
Pim Fortuyn List 0-1

And it was more probable that the Animal's Party and Europe Transparent get a seat than D66 or LPF.

Europe Transparent is founded by Paul van Buitenen. He worked for the European Union in Brussels for years. A few years ago he was a whistleblower, it was about fraud in the EU. Mostly because of his reports the European Commission (led by Jacques Santer) had to resign, and Van Buitenen was fired as reward. And now he wants to return to Brussels, to continue his investigations as a MEP.

[freek]

Here are the final predictions

    P  S  L  G  C U E  X M O
AT  6  7  0  2  0 0 0  1 0 2 18

A new party in Austria?

[freek]

I think, it's the HPM (Hans-Peter Martin) list.
Martin is a former member of the SPÖ group in the EU parliament. His main topic seems to be the incorrect behaviour of EU parliament members in getting expenses and extra pays.
In the polls the HMP list gets 10-15% !

Ok, that sounds like the Europa Transparant-party in the Netherlands. Although that party gets only about 5% in the polls here. Quite an interesting party, they want to be so open about their own finances, that they place their own bank statements online. So it's easy to see from whom they receive donations. .

http://www.europatransparant.nl/?pageid=3814

[freek]

And I have cast my vote. . CU/SGP it is.

The latest poll, from last night:

CDA 8
PvdA 8
VVD 5
GL 2
SP 2
CU/SGP 2
D66 & Other parties 0 (however one or two of them might have a chance)

[freek]

and in % of popular votes?

PvdA 25.5%
CDA 24.9%
VVD 16.0%
SP ~9 % (not mentioned in article below)
CU/SGP ~7% (not mentioned in article
GL ~6% (not mentioned in article)
================= 3.8% needed for 1 seat
PvdD (Animal's Party) 3.0%
Europa Transparant 2.9%
D66 2.7 %
LPF 2.3%

http://www.nos.nl/lijn25/europakiest/laatste_peiling.html (In Dutch).

[freek]

Whatever happened to D66!? They've had a really bad decade...being in government seems not helpful for that kinda party...

It's tradition for D66, everytime they are in the government they are halved. The only exception is 1977, when they slightly won. In 1982 they went from 17 to 6 seats, in 1998 from 24 to 14, in 2002 from 14 to 7. I think it is because they profile themselves as the most reasonable alternative to the PvdA (when the PvdA is in the government) of the VVD (when they are in the government). And that doesn't work if you are in the government too.

But now they are slowly growing in the polls, despite being in the government once again.

[freek]

The turnout here at 11.00am (polls opened 7.30am) was higher than in 1999, 9% instead of 7%. So that is positive, the turnout might end up above 30%. .

edit: at 03.00pm it is 15% instead of 12% in 1999.

[freek]

CDA 1.162.028 24,4 7
PvdA 1.121.647 23,6 7
VVD 625.659 13,2 4
GroenLinks 350.931 7,4 2
Europa Transparant 347.744 7,3 2
SP 332.471 7,0 2
ChristenUnie/SGP 280.290 5,9 2
D66 201.465 4,2 1
Partij voor de Dieren 152.910 3,2 0 (Animal's party)
LPF 121.192 2,5 0
Partij voor het Noorden 18.030 0,4 0 (North regionalist party)
Nieuw Rechts 15.663 0,3 0 (Extreme-right xenophobic LPF split off)
Leefbaar Europa 9.333 0,2 0 (Livable Europe)
Democratisch Europa 9.316 0,2 0 (Pro-EU VVD-split off)
Respect Nu 4.612 0,1 0 (Pro-tobacco party)

And compared to earlier elections (Tk'03 is Second Chamber 2003)

**************************************
     Nederland                 *********
   *************************************
   **na 99,9% vd stemmen  3/8  *********
 ***************************************
           EP'04  EP'99  TK'03 EP'04-'99
 CDA        24,4   27,0   28,6   - 2,6  
 PvdA       23,6   20,1   27,3     3,5  
 VVD        13,2   19,6   17,9   - 6,4  
 GRLINKS     7,4   11,8    5,1   - 4,4  
 CU-SGP      5,9    8,8    3,7   - 2,9  
 D66         4,2    5,8    4,1   - 1,6  
 SP          7,0    5,1    6,3     1,9  
 DemEur      0,2    0,0    0,0     0,2  
 LeefbEur    0,2    0,0    0,0     0,2  
 PvhN        0,4    0,0    0,0     0,4  
 NwRechts    0,3    0,0    0,0     0,3  
 EurTrans    7,3    0,0    0,0     7,3  
 LPF         2,6    0,0    5,7     2,6  
 PvdD        3,2    0,0    0,5     3,2  
 RespNu      0,1    0,0    0,0     0,1  
 Overige     0,0    1,8    0,8   - 1,8  
 ***************************************

Results per municipality can be found here (all preliminary, so results may be incorrect): http://www.nrc.nl/redactie/Doc/EP04/provincie.shtml

[freek]

My prediction, which I made two months ago:

CDA            8
PvdA           7
VVD+D66    4+1
GroenLinks  2
SP               2
CU/SGP       2
LPF             1

Kinda neat, eh? . Almost correct. . At the time I did the prediction (April 7), the whole Europa Transparant-party was still completely unknown, therefore I missed it. .

[freek]

EPP-ED: 276 (+43)
PES: 201 (+21)
ELDR: 66 (+16)
EUL/NGL: 39 (-3)
Greens: 42 (-6)
UEN: 27 (-3)
EDD: 15 (-1)
Others: 66 (+39)

But it is quite possible that parties switch fraction, and a lot of new parties haven't decided in which fraction they will sit.