Liberals, eurosceptics, and leftists lose support in Europe – S&D up in Germany

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 Germany social democrats are up by 1.9 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
Polling support for EU parliament groups at the end of March
EP groupSupport2-month change
ALDE13.7%-0.5 points
ECR8.4%+0.2 points
EFDD4.6%-0.4 points
ENF8.0%-0.2 points
EPP24.2%+0.8 points
GUE/NGL7.4%-0.3 points
Greens/EFA7.0%0.0 points
Non-Inscrits1.3%-0.1 points
New or uncategorized6.9%+0.1 points
S&D;17.8%+0.8 points

Theses numbers are based on the weighted average of the polling support for each parliament group in each member state. The countries are weighted by their seat share in the new parliament. The mapping of national parties to EP groups is done by POLITICO.

Source:

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.

Results in 2014 EP election
EP groupVote share 2014
ALDE9.3%
ECR6.4%
EFDD3.1%
EPP28.4%
GUE/NGL7.4%
Greens/EFA6.4%
Non-Inscrits6.4%
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.

S&D is gaining support in Germany

In Germany six polls were recorded between February 1 and March 31, 2019. S&D; and EPP have gained support in the polls, while ALDE, EFDD, and GUE/NGL have lost support.

In Germany we are analyzing polls for the EU Parliament elections.The the most recent poll is from March 27, 2019.

Polling support EU parliament groups in Germany in March
EP groupPartiesSupport2-month change
ALDEFree Democratic Party and Free Voters9.5%-1.1 points
EFDDAlternative for Germany10.1%-1.1 points
EPPChristian Democratic Union of Germany32.5%+1.1 points
GUE/NGLThe Left and Human Environment Animal Protection7.7%-0.7 points
Greens/EFAAlliance '90/The Greens and Pirate Party Germany18.7%-0.1 points
Non-InscritsNational Democratic Party of Germany and Party for Labour, Rule of Law, Animal Protection, Promotion of Elites and Grassroots Democratic Initiative2.5%-0.4 points
S&D;Social Democratic Party of Germany17.9%+1.9 points
Source:

POLITICO presents more has more in-depth polling data for Germany 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.

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