Episode 111: 2018 is dead, long live the 2019 EU Election

Previously in Europe

Happy new years you gorgeous souls, on this weeks episode we talk about the upcoming EU Election.
 

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Show Notes:

New Year Spectacular

Voting is what now?

The election is happening in May between the 23rd and 26th.

It varies from country to country, but they all use some form of proportional representation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_European_Parliament#Voting_system). Some have national party-lists (which are garbage) and some have big constituencies (Like Ireland, Belgium). Some countries use STV instead of party lists (Like Ireland and Malta). Germany, Italy and Poland use what appears to me to be an intentionally complicated system...

Spitzenkandidat?

Europe Elects has a well updated list of candidates (https://europeelects.eu/2019spitzenkandidaten/). A party's candidate matters in a similar way to a prime minister candidate, but local politics will be more important in most countries. National parties do campaigning under their own banner usually, not the grouping they fall into in the EU parliament, the effect will vary county to country.

Also there's still the looming possibility the Spitzenkandidat of the largest EU party doesn't actually get the commission president job anyway. The Council in theory puts forward commission presidents to the parliament, who have a veto.

"Ground Breaking" Outreach

The parliament has launched a website (https://what-europe-does-for-me.eu/) to explain why the EU is so cool.

For instance if you're someone who "likes shopping online" the EU is totally for you - https://what-europe-does-for-me.eu/en/portal/2/G04

... Yes this will create an improved voter turnout. The 2014 election had only a turnout of 163,551,013 (42.54%)

"Polls are always wrong anyway"

There a three great aggregators of polls:

• https://europeanelectionsstats.eu/ They have a good seat projection based on a combination of national polls and PollofPolls.eu. They also put parties into general buckets of far right, left and moderate

• https://pollofpolls.eu/EU which has some trend lines based on national polling. They handily show major events on their graphs to explain changes. Along with that they provide analysis

• Europe Elects (https://europeelects.eu/ep2019/) some nice seat projections based on similar data sources. Their maps are great showing EU party projections by country.

General outcome:

• ALDE up
• Far right would be up if they all grouped together... but they don't like each other sometimes.
• S&D will take a hit from losing Labour and not replacing it
• EPP could see a hit but will almost certainly still "win" the election and probably be in a good place to put Weber up for President of the Commission

The polls underestimated the EPP and ALDE in the last election by quite a bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_European_Parliament_election

Macron Who Now?

His current popularity means they might get very few MEPs.. so Macron's agenda will probably go nowhere? It depends, if ALDE end up as part of the ruling coalition it might be because of his support - but really anything could happen. En Marche may be a toxic association by May at this rate

Don't forget the B word

I guess Brexit could just not happen... who knows... that'd really ruin all the hard work people have put into seat projections

##Parties are actually called Groupings but the effective difference is...something

Here are the links to each "party" mentioned

http://www.guengl.eu/

https://www.greens-efa.eu/en/

https://www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/

https://alde.eu/en/

https://www.eppgroup.eu/

https://www.ecrgroup.eu/

http://www.efddgroup.eu/

https://www.enfgroup-ep.eu/

##Things you can do

• Vote, I mean, yeah.
• Talk about the election with friends and families
• Talk to non-native EU-immigrant friends, make sure they know they can vote and how to do so, help them with translations and government bureaucracy if they have trouble with the local language.
• Do your research and join and volunteer with a national party you support