European Parliament Elections 2014 – The results (Part 1)

This post is the penultimate in my series about the 2014 elections for the European Parliament. To see all my previous posts, please click on this link. I have covered turnout, the manifestos, public opinion, the voting system and much more.

I had planned to publish this post earlier. The original idea was to have it available by the end of Monday. Unfortunately, there has been severe delays with the counting in Northern Ireland. The use the Single Transferable Vote system to elect three MEPs (unlike the rest of the UK, which uses Closed List Proportional Representation). Anyway, you can find more about this issue later on in the post.

Lets get on with the results.

Results for Great Britain

The full results table, which includes all parties in Great Britain, is far too long to display within this post. The following is a table featuring results for the top ten GB parties, which includes all the ones who had MEPs after the 2009 election:

This is a graph showing the vote share for the top 10 parties (excluding Northern Ireland) in this election:

There are some interesting things to take from the above. Everyone seemed pleased that the British National Party were wiped out. Nick Griffin lost his seat, along with any possibility of the party making a recovery. This is despite another party to the right of the Conservatives (UKIP) making huge gains. It is worth noting though that UKIP can actually be considered more moderate. I maintain the belief that the party and Farage are not racist, but a selection of the members are. The BNP also did much worse than An Independence from Europe, who were only established a few months ago.

However, in terms of losses, the biggest story was the Liberal Democrats losing nearly a million votes compared to the last election. They also now have less of a vote share than the Greens – part of an alliance that is historically weaker than ALDE (for more about this, see my post on parties and alliances).

Only two parties that existed in the 2009 elections had an increase in votes of over 70,000 (Labour and UKIP, whose increase were both over 1.5m).

Interestingly, three of the four parties at the bottom of the above table are well-known for their anti-Europe policies, yet UKIP are anti-Europe and are top. It’s a clear fail for the most extreme views.

There were some significant changes to the MEP numbers. This graph shows the changes for those GB parties who had MEPs in 2009:

Of the parties who had MEPs after 2009, the BNP were the only party to be wiped out. This is despite all the media coverage that suggested the same would happen to the Liberal Democrats. Catherine Bearder is the lone Lib Dem MEP now. I suppose you could say she is the head of her group. Her presence means the Lib Dems only have just over 9% of their previous number. Edward McMillan-Scott lost his seat and he was a long standing Vice-President of the European Parliament. In addition, Bill Newton-Dunn – the only MEP to have been there since 1979 – isn’t an MEP anymore. Those two mean the party has lost a huge amount of experience.

If we exclude Northern Ireland, Labour and UKIP were the only parties to get at least one MEP in each region. They were also two of the three parties to increase their compliment of MEPs (although UKIP gained the most).

Of the parties in the chart above, only Plaid Cymru and the SNP kept their number of seats.

As well as the gains made in the English regions, UKIP also got their first MEP in Scotland, which is significant as the party had no real presence there before and the more powerful parties are on the left (SNP and Labour) – not the right.

Apart from Scotland and London, UKIP got at least 25% of the MEPs in each region of Great Britain. The percentage gets as high as 50% in Yorkshire and the Humber. Labour’s highest percentage is 66.67% (North East). The highest for the Conservatives is 42.86% (Eastern). For more on the percentages please consult my results spreadsheet.

Gender balance is a hot topic. Many people feel that their should be a gender share that is reflective of the population. However, this is difficult to achieve given the favouritism of closed lists and the chances of success in each region. There’s also the fact that the regions don’t have identical MEP numbers. I normally consider candidate quality and that should be the main consideration in party list orders, but it isn’t always the case.

After the 2014 elections in the UK, there are now 43 men and 30 women.

Northern Ireland

I could have gone ahead without the Northern Ireland results – especially as they cannot be included easily on the results table (see the previous section). There are a number of websites who did that. However, I prefer to provide my readers with a complete picture, in order to be as well-informed as possible. Unfortunately, many sites said the election was over before the end of the Northern Ireland count. That is simply not true. It is also suggesting to the people of Northern Ireland that their votes and MEPs are not as important. Frankly, it’s disgraceful. They may have different parties, but there was still some interest for the Conservatives, UKIP and the Green Party.

Anyway, all three incumbent MEPs (Martina Anderson, Diane Dodds, Jim Nicholson) were re-elected. The only change was that Dodds was the second most popular, instead of third (2009). It’s a shame that it took so much time to tell the electorate that they chose the same people.

Turnout

According to this page, the overall turnout was 36%. That’s higher than the last European Parliament Election. It’s higher than the mean and median (the figures prior to this election). It is certainly nowhere near the record of 38.52% in 2004 though. It’s also pitiful compared to the likes of Belgium though, whose turnout has always been above 90%.

For more on the turnout history, please see my second post in this series.

Finally…

This was a remarkable election for a number of reasons. The gains for UKIP were an amazing achievement, although something like that was expected. The gain of their first Scottish MEP is also significant. The losses for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were huge, but this was also expected. They are a coalition of two parties on opposite sides of the political spectrum, who regularly trail Labour in the opinion polls. Other big news was the wipeout of the BNP and their vote total being lower than a party that has only been around for a few months.

The second part of the results coverage in this series will look at the composition of the European Parliament as a whole and the rise of far right politics in the EU. I will also mention what is going on with the Commission President election.

Prior to the vote, I produced a document listing all the MEPs by region, as well as providing details about party affiliation, length of time as an MEP and more. Now that the election is finally over, I have begun work on a new version of that document and it will be available soon. Keep an eye on the Google+ community, Twitter and Facebook for a link to it. I hope you’ll find it useful.

So, what do you think?