{"id":1764,"date":"2019-05-21T20:12:29","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T19:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2021-10-04T10:50:32","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T09:50:32","slug":"eu-election-2019-1-how-many-meps-will-each-party-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/eu-election-2019-1-how-many-meps-will-each-party-win\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Election 2019 #1 – How many MEPs will each party win?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is my forecast for the election that was not supposed to be happening in the UK.\u00a0 The Brexit Party is well on course to be the largest party and could even set the record for the best ever vote share by a party in the d’Hondt era of EU elections in the UK.\u00a0 At the same time, the Liberal Democrats have the possibility of beating both the Conservatives and Labour parties in a UK-wide election for the first time since 1906.<\/p>\n

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My 2019 EU Parliamentary Election Forecast<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"The Brexit Party are clear favourites to top the poll with 32 MEPs out of a total of 73 MEPs on a UK vote share of 32%.\u00a0 As shown in table E1, they would be 5 MEPs short of a majority.\u00a0 They would take over from UKIP as the UK’s largest party in the EU Parliament with UKIP losing all of their MEPs but there is no question that much of the UKIP support has simply switched to the Brexit Party especially since Nigel Farage was the leader on both occasions.<\/p>\n

Labour and the Lib Dems are currently vying for second place with Labour favourites to do so.\u00a0 Regardless of who comes second, the parties are already interpreting the outcome differently.\u00a0 For Labour, EU19 could be their second worst EU election performance (beaten only by 2009).\u00a0 For the Lib Dems, EU19 will be a welcome recovery from a disastrous 2014 but it should be noted from chart E2 that at present they are merely on track to match their historical performances.\u00a0 The same goes for the Green party which is only expected to match their 2014 performance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The biggest loser by far though is the Conservative Party which is expected to come 4th with only 10% of the UK vote and lose the majority of their MEPs.\u00a0 Indeed there is the possibility of their vote share being in single figures which would be quite something.<\/p>\n

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How does the d’Hondt election system work?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Chart E2 shows that all elections since 1999 have used the d’Hondt voting system instead of the First Past The Post (FPTP) used in General Elections.\u00a0 Voters vote for a party and depending on which election region they live in, their vote goes towards electing anything between 3 & 10 MEPs in their region.\u00a0 To demonstrate, I will use the London region\"\" which elects 8 MEPs and the outcome is shown in table E4.1.<\/p>\n

D’Hondt works by undertaking X rounds of counting where X is the number of MEPs to be elected.\u00a0 In round 1, the total number of votes is counted for each party and in table E4.1, I am showing the votes as % vote shares based on the latest polls.\u00a0 Labour is currently expected to top the poll with 23.3% but the Lib Dems and Brexit Party are close behind with just under 21% vote share.\u00a0 Since Labour have come first, they win an MEP in the 1st round.<\/p>\n

Then we move to round 2.\u00a0 At each round, the parties’ Quotient is calculated which is equal to number of votes won divided by 1 + number of MEPs won in previous rounds.\u00a0 Since Labour won an MEP in round 1, their vote is now divided by 1+1 = 2 hence their quotient is now 11.7%.\u00a0 The quotients’ for all other parties remains the same since we are dividing their votes by 1.\u00a0 The Lib Dems now have the highest quotient in round 2 so they win an MEP.<\/p>\n

In round 3, the Lib Dems quotient is now 20.8\/(1+1) = 10.4 and the Brexit Party now has the highest Quotient and so they win an MEP.\u00a0 In round 4 though, Labour now has the highest quotient and so they win their second MEP.\u00a0 This means in round 5, their quotient becomes their vote share divided by (1+2) i.e. 23.3\/3 which is 7.8.\u00a0 This is not the highest quotient and the Greens win in round 5.\u00a0 The Conservatives win an MEP in round 6 and the Lib Dems and Brexit Party win their second MEPs in rounds 7 & 8 whereupon the London count is complete.\u00a0 Had London been allocated 10 MEPs like the South East then Labour & Lib Dems would have gained their 3rd MEPs in rounds 9 & 10.<\/p>\n

\"\"The numbers of MEPs each region elects is shown at the bottom of table E4.2.\u00a0 The vote shares in this instance is for all of England outside of the London region and is also based on latest polls.\u00a0 I will explain the significance of the EngXL (England excluding London) geography later on in this post but this table shows that the North East and Northern Ireland are the smallest regions with only 3 MEPs each whilst the South East is the largest region with 10 MEPs.<\/p>\n

One day, I intend to write a series of blog posts about election systems but I am in favour of the UK switching from FPTP to a 3-Member Open List d’Hondt system.\u00a0 You can read more about this system in this article I wrote following the 2015 UK General Election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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What are the Polls saying?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

To make an accurate prediction of the number of MEPs per party, we need to know each parties’ vote share in each of the 12 UK regions.\u00a0 More than that, we need to know the order of the parties in each region.\u00a0 Traditionally opinion polls have concentrated on estimating vote shares at the GB level but this is not particularly helpful for an EU election.\u00a0 Most polls do publish a breakdown by geography but the sample sizes can be quite small in some cases making it difficult to trust the results.\"\"<\/p>\n

Tables E3.1 & E3.2 show my interpretation of the polls by region.\u00a0 E3.1 shows the expected order of the parties and E3.2 the expected vote shares for the top 6 parties.\u00a0 It is not difficult to see from table E4.1 earlier that to stand any real chance of having MEPs elected, you really need to be in the top 3 or 4 parties to have a good chance.\u00a0 Parties that come 5th will very rarely win MEPs.<\/p>\n

London, Wales (twice), Scotland & Northern Ireland are all lucky to have had polls specifically for that region.\u00a0 This is very helpful for us forecasters but the other regions in England outside of London (what I call EngXL) are not so fortunate.\u00a0 They have to rely on regional crossbreaks from the standard polls which are much more prone to error as I found to my cost in the 2017 General Election<\/a>.\u00a0 However, YouGov has carried out at least 1 large poll for HopeNotHate which gave separate estimates for each EngXL region based on much larger than normal samples so that is helpful.<\/p>\n

To derive the figures in table E3.2, I have taken a weighted average of region-specific polls and averages of regional crossbreaks as follows:-<\/p>\n