Monday, May 27, 2019

2019 European Election Maps

The big two political groups who have historically dominated the European Parliament have failed to win overall control in the 2019 European Elections. Neither the centre-right European People's Party nor the Socialists and Democrats bloc achieved enough seats to form a working majority.

The general trend across Europe seems to have been for a fall in votes for the centre-right and centre-left parties. Far-right and nationalist parties have performed well in many countries across Europe. The Green Party has also seen a large rise in its share of the vote across much of the continent.

National newspapers and news channels in Europe tend to concentrate on national news. The first mapped visualizations of the 2019 European Elections are mostly limited in scope to individual countries. Here is a round-up of some of the election maps created for individual countries across the continent:

Germany

Zeit has released a choropleth election map colored to show the level of support for the winning party in each electoral district. It has also created a series of small multiples showing the level of support across Germany for each of the political parties. These small maps show that there is still a large political split between the former East Germany and West Germany.

The three largest parties the Christian Democratic Union, the Greens and the Social Democratic Party were most popular generally in electoral districts in the old West Germany. Angela Merkle's CDU remained the largest party in Germany, although its share of the vote dropped from 35% (2014) to 29%. The SPD also experienced a large drop in support, from 27% to 15.5%. The Greens made the biggest gains winning 21 seats and 21.5% of the votes (up from 10.7%).


Support for the extreme left party, Die Linke and the extreme right party, AfD was strongest in electoral districts in the old East Germany. The extreme right-wing party AfD did improve their share of the vote from 7.1% in 2014 to 11% but didn't make the huge gains that far right and nationalist parties made in some other countries in Europe.

United Kingdom

The BBC has mapped out the 2019 European election results in the UK. The BBC's map is colored to show the party which won the largest share of the vote in each electoral district. However the map also allows you to view a choropleth view of support across the country for each of the major political parties.

In England and Wales the nationalist Brexit party was the big winner with 33% of the vote. However they only achieved 19.9% of the vote in Scotland, where the Remain supporting Scottish National Party won 28.4% of the vote (up 7.7% since 2014). The biggest news in the UK (aside from the large share gained by Brexit) was the complete annihilation of the governing Conservative Party who only managed to win 8.8% of the national vote. The Labour Party also saw a 10.8% drop in its share of the vote, down to 14.6%.

France

In France Le Monde has mapped out the winning political party in each electoral district. The far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen narrowly beat President Emmanuel Macron's La République en Marche party. There was less than one percent between the two parties and they will both have the same number of seats in the European parliament (23 seats each).

The traditional left-wing and right-wing parties in France each failed to achieve 10% of the vote. The Greens were the third largest party, picking up 13.5% of the vote and 13 seats. Although the far right National Party won the largest percentage of the vote (just) their share of the vote in 2019 is actually down by about 1.5% on 2014.

Spain

The traditional left-wing parties of Europe have seen a loss of votes in most of the continent. But not in Spain. The Socialist Party (PSOE) won the largest share of the European Election votes in Spain with 33%. The right-wing Popular Party (PP) were the largest party in 2014. The collapse of the SPD in Germany means that the PSOE could be the largest party in the Socialists and Democrats bloc in the European Parliament.

The far-right Vox party won only 6% of the vote in Spain and will have three seats in the European Parliament.

Belgium

De Morgen has mapped out the European Election votes in Belgium. The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) were the big losers in these elections, dropping their share of the vote by 14.2% since 2014. The far right-wing Vlaams Belang increased their vote share by 12.1% and the Greens increased their share of the vote by 7.8%. The N-VA and Vlaams Belang will now have three seats each in the European Parliament and the Greens will have one seat.

The political map of Belgium always shows a large geographical split between Wallonia (French speaking) and Flanders (Flemish speaking). This is essentially a result of the electoral system which says that voters can only vote on the lists depending on the language area they live in. The country also has different political parties standing in each of the two main regions (both N-VA and Vlaams Belang are Flemish parties who advocate for the secession of Flanders from Belgium).


Note: counting of votes is still continuing across Europe and results are accurate at time of writing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

AfD is not "far right". Don't believe everything the media tells you. Read the AfD party plattform. AfD is the only party that can help us against Merkels single political party (CDU/SPD/SED/GRÜNE/FDP).

Anonymous said...

Stop sugarcoating this. The AfD is not only "far right", it's a fascist group which pushes conspiracy theories and uses fear to promote their agenda. They call other politicians pigs and actively promote armed border guards around Germany who should 'shoot on sight' at any refugee they see. They want to remove the holocaust monument (which they refer to as "monument of shame") and call on the country to stop atoning for its Nazis past (Bjorn Hocke). In fact, some go even further referring to 'Germanies Glorious past' and using clear Nazi terminology to refer to the far left, jews and other minorities. They are actively looking into the possibilities to force-sterilization of unaccompanied refugee minors (Andre Wendt). etc. I could go on, it's revolting.

This is a dangerous, fascist, organisation that promotes racism, bigotry and hate.

ARC Reef said...

Pretty detailed maps. I was surprised to see the socialist party in Spain won.

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