European Union Election Results

The results from the recent elections to the European Parliament saw populists rise and the center just about hold: here’s what happened in Spain and the rest of the EU.

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Pollsters haven’t been having the best of times of late. No one called victory for the leave vote in the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum and Trump’s election to President of the United States was considered a joke until it actually happened. However, those whose job it is to predict the future of politics should take solace in the fact that the results of the EU referendum went broadly as expected. In our preview of the May elections, we discussed forecasts that showed the EU’s two leading parties losing their majority and a surge in support for populist parties hostile to the European project and this is broadly what took place.

EU-Wide Results

This year’s elections saw the EU’s two main trans-national parties—the center-right European People’s Party and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats—lose the overall majority they have enjoyed since the Parliament’s inception in 1979. The EPP lost 38 seats, falling from 217 to 179, while the S&D lost 35, moving from 186 to 153. The traditional parties which flank these two had an equally poor showing, with the left wing coalition GUE/NGL dropping from 52 to 38 seats, and the right wing conservative grouping ECR sinking from 76 seats to 64.

In their place, the European Parliament will now have more representation from two other strands of political thinking, both highly divergent from one another, Thus, the successes of each shows that the polarized nature of modern politics is alive and well in the European Union.

The first thing to note was the success of some populist and right wing parties at both national and European wide levels. Some analyses show that populists won as much as 29% of the overall vote share, compared with 24% in 2014 and just 9% in 1999, making this the highest score this brand of politics has reached in the modern European era. Notable successes were seen in Italy, where Matteo Salvini’s Northern League won the highest national vote share; France, as Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National beat incumbent President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party; and the UK, who we’ll be looking at in closer detail later on.

Despite these breakthroughs, populist and right wing nationalist wins were mainly confined to these three countries, and so their victories do not quite represent the tidal wave of populist support that many in the status quo feared. Furthermore, the fact that each of these parties prioritize their own national interests and agendas, are reticent to cooperate in transnational blocs, and have differing attitudes when you get down to the granular details of policy, means it is unlikely they will be able to assert the influence their seat numbers might suggest. Disruptors, yes—revolutionaries, no.

More comforting for progressives and fans of the EU was the success of Liberal parties at both national and EU-wide levels. The Liberal bloc ALDE almost doubled in number from 68 to 106 seats, while Liberal parties in the UK, France, and the northern and eastern fringes of the EU all had strong showings too. When you couple this with the fact that losses from the two main parties—who are broadly centrist and progressive in their own right—were not quite as severe as expected, it proves that the center ground of European politics was able to hold against forces that sought to undermine it.

Perhaps the most heartening results for anyone with an eye on the long term future of the planet was the sweep of Green movements across the continent. Green parties moved from 52 to 74 seats in the parliament as a whole, with big gains made in Germany, France and the UK. The successes of Green movements show that what was once a fringe political issue is now becoming mainstream, especially among young voters who will ultimately have to live with the consequences of continued environmental destruction. The fact that partisan squabbles continue to dominate politics may well seem absurd to future generations, especially given there is already a scientific consensus warning against global apathy on the health of the planet, which may soon degrade beyond repair.

Results in Spain

Spain’s incumbent president Pedro Sanchez can look back on May’s electoral bonanza with a feeling of satisfied contempt. Buoyed after winning the popular vote of the General Election (Sanchez has also now been asked by King Felipe VI to form a new government), the socialist PSOE enjoyed a similar success in the European Parliamentary elections. In the latter, the PSOE, led by veteran politician Josep Borrell, won 32.8% of the vote and 20 seats—a 9.8pp upward swing from the previous EP elections.

This happened, as in the General Election before it, at the cost of the center right PP. Pablo Cassado’s party, still mired by the corruption scandals which saw previous leader Mariano Rajoy ousted in a no confidence motion, lost 4 seats and fell to only 20.1% of the vote. The left wing party Unidas Podemos also had a night to forget, the worst of any major party in fact. They lost 5 seats and nearly -8pp compared with 2014.

In their place, the new centrist party Ciudadanos gained a marginally increased share of the vote, while the far right party Vox—populists who many feared would leave their mark on the European elections to a greater extent than in the national ones—also increased their vote share. However, they failed to beat any of the other major established parties, something which was surely its goal in these elections which are so often made up of protest votes and wins for those on the fringes.

In Catalunya, the fragmented pro-independence vote was won by the left wing secessionists Ahora Repúblicas, whose leader Oriol Junqueras was elected as an MEP. Junqueras’ trial by the Spanish state in Madrid recently came to close, and we’ll be taking a look at the outcome of this in a future article. Junts Per Catalunya, the liberal pro-independence party, also had a fair showing—their leader Carles Puigdemont, who remains in self imposed exile in Brussels, was also elected to the European Parliament. However, neither of these party leaders, nor the three other Catalanista politicians who also retained their seats, will be allowed to take their seats, as the current president of the European Parliament has supported the Spanish state by suspending all current and future accreditations given to these recently elected Catalan MEPs. Whether they will be allowed to represent the constituents who voted for them in the European Parliament at any point in the next 5 year term remains unclear.

Despite the continuing Catalan debacle, Spain remains broadly as it was—pro EU, with parties of the center holding firm in the face of threats from the right. If only the same could be said of another EU member in the midst of a constitutional crisis...

Results in the UK

The EU elections in the UK were viewed by many as a proxy vote for a second referendum. If we are also to take that view, then the results in a hypothetical second referendum would be... Well, pretty much as divided, complicated and split as they were in 2016.

The main talking point was of course the huge surge in support for Nigel Farage’s newly formed The Brexit Party, who won 31.6% of the vote and lead in every region other than London and Scotland. For a party that only launched in February of this year to win by over 10pp more than their closest rival is an impressive feat, there’s no getting around it. By going in with crystal clear messages—“you were betrayed,” “democracy is broken”—and a name with such obvious implications, The Brexit Party romped to victory without having to put out any policies or even a manifesto. Those in Britain who want Brexit at all cost have found in Nigel Farage, it seems, their leader once again.

But look at the landscape of British politics at the moment to see how they actually did it, and the accomplishment becomes a little less spectacular. To view the results in the UK only as a victory for The Brexit Party is pretty reductive. The party basically took all the votes for a hard Brexit lost by the Conservatives, whose abysmal showing—only 4 seats and a -14.8pp vote share change—was the result of their utter failure to deliver Brexit or indeed anything of note over the past 3 years. Furthermore, UKIP, Farage’s old party who won with 26.6% of votes in 2014, were almost completely wiped out. The Brexit Party were the obvious receptacle for the anti-Tory anti-EU protest vote, similar in many respects to UKIP in 2014, and their base messaging swept up as many votes as you would expect.

On the Remain side, the Labour Party’s continued obfuscation on Brexit saw them lose almost as many votes and seats as the Conservatives. In trying to appeal to both sides, leader Jeremy Corbyn bungled his way to a -11.3pp plummet in the vote share. To be doing this badly against what is one of the most incompetent governments in the history of UK politics is completely unprecedented. And when 80% of your party members—who, lest we forget, Corbyn insisted would dictate party policy—are vehemently anti-Brexit, Labour’s position makes even less sense. That is, unless you take the view, as many do, that Corbyn and his hard left advisors are themselves so anti-EU they cannot bring themselves to prevent something (Brexit) that they have craved for decades.

The Liberal Democrats have obligingly stepped into Labour’s shoes as the party of Remain, campaigning with the slogan: “Bollocks to Brexit.” The Lib Dems duly came in second in the vote share with 16 seats, 20.3% of votes and a 13.4pp upward swing from 2014. Their revival as an electoral force has come without strong leaders or complex slogans, showing the power of a clear message in these polarized times. It’s something that Change UK, a newly formed and now newly split party of Labour and Conservative defectors, should have taken heed of. As mentioned earlier, the Green Party also had a strong showing in the UK; their anti-Brexit, pro-environmental message saw them into fourth place, just losing out to the Labour Party.

Commentators on both sides of the Brexit divide have attempted to claim that “Remain” or “Leave” were the victors of the elections, and depending on your partisan inclinations, and a little creativity doing the maths, you can easily make either seem true. Take out the votes of Labour and the Conservatives, who some polls say cannot be unambiguously labeled as solely Leave or Remain, and the anti-Brexit parties actually won with 40.4% of the vote compared with the pro-Brexit parties’ 34.9%. However, other commentators prefer to keep the Conservatives with the pro-Brexit brigade, giving them a marginal lead. Labour’s position and voter base is deemed too ambiguous to put in either camp with any real confidence.

So, after all that, and whichever way you try to swing it, all the EU elections results really proved in the UK was that the 52-48 split of the 2016 referendum is pretty much enduring. As the Tory leadership contest gets underway and a general election looks ever more likely, polarization continues to rule the day.

You can have a look at the results from Barcelona’s local elections with our article here.

Detailed results of how Spain voted can be viewed here.

Have a read of the Barcelona Metropolitan’s other political reporting here.

Harry Stott is a regular contributor to the Barcelona Metropolitan covering Brexit, local political and social issues as well as the music scene. He recently received a B.A. in music from the University of Leeds, and now writes and produces radio content for a number of organizations in Barcelona and beyond. You can read more of Harry's articles here.