Polls from across the EU show declining support for the parties in the the liberal ALDE, the eurosceptic EFDD, and the leftist GUE/NGL groups of the European Parliament in the past two months. In Czech Republic right-wing populists are up by 1.4 points .
This analysis is based on 223 polls conducted between February 1 and March 31, 2019. The polls have been gathered and aggregated by POLITICO. More about the methodology below.
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) is the group that seems to be taking the biggest hit. It is down by 0.5 points to 13.7 percent. Here are some of the national parties belonging to ALDE that are particularly losing ground:
- Estonian Centre Party (Estonia): -6.6 points to 20.2 percent
- Citizens-Party of the Citizenry (Spain): -2.9 points to 15.5 percent
- Amsterdam coalition (Croatia): -1.6 points to 11.0 percent
Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) and European United Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) are also down in the latest polls by 0.4 and 0.3 points.
The EP groups with the biggest increase across the continent are the christian democrat EPP and the social democratic S&D, up by 0.8 and 0.8 points respectively. These are the national parties of EPP that have made the largest gains:
- National Liberal Party (Romania): +5.2 points to 27.1 percent
- New Slovenia (Slovenia): +3.0 points to 9.4 percent
- Christian Democrats (Sweden): +2.7 points to 10.2 percent
EP group | Support | 2-month change |
---|---|---|
ALDE | 13.7% | -0.5 points |
ECR | 8.4% | +0.2 points |
EFDD | 4.6% | -0.4 points |
ENF | 8.0% | -0.2 points |
EPP | 24.2% | +0.8 points |
GUE/NGL | 7.4% | -0.3 points |
Greens/EFA | 7.0% | 0.0 points |
Non-Inscrits | 1.3% | -0.1 points |
New or uncategorized | 6.9% | +0.1 points |
S&D; | 17.8% | +0.8 points |
One of the big trends we expect to see in the 2019 elections is the rise of populist, nationalist and eurosceptic parties. The three EP groups partly or completely under this umbrella (ENF, EFDD and ECR) currently poll at 21.0 percent, compared to 9.5 percent in the previous election. Note that Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) was launched in 2015.
EP group | Vote share 2014 |
---|---|
ALDE | 9.3% |
ECR | 6.4% |
EFDD | 3.1% |
EPP | 28.4% |
GUE/NGL | 7.4% |
Greens/EFA | 6.4% |
Non-Inscrits | 6.4% |
S&D; | 22.5% |
The vote shares for the 2014 EU Parliament election have to be taken with a grain of salt. They are computed as a weighted mean of the vote shares of each parliament group in every country. Each country is weighted according to the number of seats in the parliament. In some cases the elected members of a coalition of parties are split into multiple EP groups. In Ireland for example the Independents joined three different parliament groups. In those rare cases we assume each parliament group to have received a third of the votes, as the official results don't include a detailed breakdown.
The numbers don't add up to 100 percent as the votes of non elected parties are not presented.
ENF is gaining support in Czech Republic
In Czech Republic eight polls were recorded between February 1 and March 31, 2019. ENF, S&D;, and Greens/EFA have gained support in the polls, while ALDE, ECR, and EPP have lost support.
As there are few or no polls on the EU Parliament elections in Czech Republic we analyze polling data for the national parliament. The the most recent poll is from March 24, 2019.
EP group | Parties | Support | 2-month change |
---|---|---|---|
ALDE | ANO- YES 2011 | 31.4% | -0.3 points |
ECR | Civic Democratic Party | 13.1% | -0.6 points |
EFDD | Party of Free Citizens | 1.0% | -0.2 points |
ENF | Freedom and Direct Democracy | 8.2% | +1.4 points |
EPP | Christian and Democratic Union - Czechoslovak People's Party, Mayors and Independents, and TOP 09 | 13.3% | -0.7 points |
GUE/NGL | Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia | 7.3% | +0.1 points |
Greens/EFA | Green Party | 1.4% | +0.4 points |
New or uncategorized | Czech Pirate Party | 15.2% | -0.3 points |
S&D; | Czech Social Democratic Party | 7.5% | +0.9 points |
POLITICO presents more has more in-depth polling data for Czech Republic at pollofpolls.eu.
About this analysis
This report is based on data collected and aggregated by POLITICO through the affiliated site pollofpolls.eu.
POLITICO use statistical models to compute trend lines for national parties in all EU countries based on local polls. The trend line represent the current likely support of each party.
In countries with frequent polls on the EP election we use these in our aggregation (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, France, Croatia, Italy, Poland, and Romania). In countries with few or no EP polls we analyze national parliament surveys (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, and Slovakia).
We aggregate the national support for each party to a weighted European mean of each EU parliament group. Each party is weighted based on the number of seats that the country holds in the parliament.
We don't know for sure what EU parliament groups the national parties will join (if they get any seats). Parties are categorised into EU parliament groups by POLITICO, as follows:
- Parties currently represented in the parliament are assumed to remain in their groups.
- The parties that are not in the parliament, but have been before, are assumed to return to their previous groups.
- Parties founded after the 2014 election are categorised as “new” until otherwise reported. This categorization is done manually and may not be fully comprehensive.
The polling data is made available by POLITICO under the a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.