A woman casts her ballot for the European elections at a polling station.
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Populist far-right parties won their highest support ever in this year’s European Parliament elections, according to early exit polls on Sunday.
The first official EU projections, published at 8:30pm local time, showed that the far-right Identity and Democracy groups made big gains in the vote, while the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists Party made small gains.
The centre-right European People’s Party is expected to win the most seats again, slightly extending its lead from last time.
The forecast is based on exit polls, national estimates and pre-election opinion polling data, and follows four days of EU-wide voting.
Meanwhile, the liberal Renew Europe and the Greens/European Liberal Alliance are both expected to lose a significant number of seats.
Here’s a breakdown of the 2024 early vote and the 2019 vote:
- European People’s Party (EPP) — up from 176 to 181 seats
- Progressive Social Democrats (S&D) — down from 139 to 135 seats
- Renew Europe (RE) — down from 102 to 82 seats
- European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) — up from 69 to 71 seats
- Identity and Democracy (ID)—up from 49 seats to 62 seats
- Green Party/European Liberal Alliance — down from 71 to 53 seats
- Left — down from 37 to 34 seats
- Non-Independent Members (NI) — down from 61 to 51 seats
More than 400 million people across the EU’s 27 member states were eligible to vote for the next European Parliament, one of the EU’s three core institutions.
The European Parliament is responsible for deciding EU laws and the budget and is the only directly elected institution in the EU. It is made up of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) elected by each Member State and who come together to form the European Group of Parties.
The new parliament will have 720 seats, with the most populous state responsible for electing the most MEPs. Germany leads with 96 seats, followed by Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta with six seats each.
This is breaking news, please check back for the latest updates.
