European Election Watch

For the first time in 30 years, Montenegro’s government will not be led by the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS).

Ireland's election yielded a fractured political landscape. The two mainstream parties are considering a grand coalition to keep Sinn Fein out but voters have asked for change; they should beware the consequences of denying voters' choice.

The 2019 Finnish parliamentary elections saw the Social Democrats emerge as the narrow winners by a margin of 0.2 percent. Led by former Finance Minister Antti Rinne, they received 17.7 percent of the popular vote, or 545,544 votes.

Italian voters loudly voiced their discontent on March 4, propelling populist and far-right forces to the top of the polls. Inconclusive electrion results mean the country now faces weeks of negotiations.

On September 24, German voters delivered an ambivalent victory to Angela Merkel, returning her to power as Chancellor of Germany but with a much smaller margin for her Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Along with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU collectively lost 8.5 percent of its vote share compared to the previous election in 2013. One million ex-CDU/CSU voters also shifted allegiance to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The AfD’s strength in the Bundestag is a shock for German politics (there has not been a far-right party in Parliament since 1961) but it reflects broader trends in European politics which have seen a steady rise in far-right groups for the past five years. The vote for the AfD was first and foremost a rejection of the established parties rather than an endorsement of the AfD’s anti-immigrant and nationalist agenda: 60 percent of its voters reportedly chose the party as a means of protest. Worryingly, AfD’s support was the strongest among 30 to 44-year-olds, a sign that it may be present on the political stage for a while.

The presidential election appears to have been just the beginning.  Yesterday’s French legislative elections was the coup de grace.  France’s two traditional parties – the Socialist Party and Les Républicains – have been shattered and the two far-left and far-right parties fared worse than expected.  The Socialists in particular, who will lose over 200 seats, have been vanquished.  Benoit Hamon, the Socialist presidential candidate, and Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the Secretary General of the Socialist Party, lost their seats.

On May 7, 2017, centrist Emmanuel Macron was elected as the next president of France and sworn in on May 14 as the youngest French president since Napoléon Bonaparte. Macron beat far-right Marine Le Pen 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent, with a relatively low turnout of 74.56 percent (compared to 2012’s 80.35 percent), 8.51 percent blank ballots and 2.96 percent spoiled ballots – a record high –, and without a formal political party structure.

On March 20, the five presidential candidates who nationally polled above 10% gathered for their first presidential debate, marking the official start of the French presidential campaign. The three-hour long, substantive debate on the future direction of France was divided into three parts: society, the economy, and France’s place in the world.