Jacob Christensen » Europe 2009

The 2009 Elections to the European Parliament

Jacob Christensen — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:32:50 +0000

This is an act of shameless self-promotion: Along with Flemming Juul Christiansen I contributed with a chapter on the elections in Denmark. Given the price tag, you will probably find it in specialist libraries.

Juliet Lodge (ed): The 2009 Elections to the European Parliament. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (Amazon.co.uk)

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Bendtsen? He Should Be Around Here Somewhere…

Jacob Christensen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:17:40 +0000

Berlingske Tidende has the preliminary list of the committee memberships of the Danish MEPs. All of the Danish MEPs?

Well, no…

Det er endnu ikke lykkedes Berlingske Tidende, at finde ud af hvor den tidligere konservative vicestatsminister og �konomi- og erhvervsminister Bendt Bendtsen vil g�re sin indflydelse g�ldende.

Update: A sign of life from Mr. Bendtsen. No vice-chairmanships, though.

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Two Down…

Jacob Christensen — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:17:19 +0000

Let me just note that Denmark will be losing two political parties: Borgerligt Centrum will be defunct before really getting organised while the June Movement will be calling it a day in the early autumn.

So, what are the implications? Well, BC in my view would have been yet another of the many splinter parties scattered around on the political scene, so I don’t really think that losing it will mean a lot to Danish politics. I mean, Retsforbundet and Dansk Samling are in fact still around.

The next question is if the combined forces of Anders Samuelsen and Simon Emil Amnitzb�ll will be able to haul Liberal Alliance over the 2% threshold or if LA will be as forgotten as … say … Liberalt Centrum come 2011. That the Social Liberal Party has lost most of its traditional right wing and is now squarely fixed in the Red Corner is another matter. Maybe the Conservative Party will be the new home for the old right-wing faction of the SLP?

The relationship between the June Movement and the People’s Movement against the EU was always tricky. Basically, JM could be seen as less Euro-sceptic than the PM, but it is telling that the new MEP¹ for the PM is also a member of the Red-Green Alliance while Kjeld Albrechtsen, the chairman of the JM, is a prominent member of … the Red-Green Alliance. In a way it is more surprising that Denmark could sustain two anti-EU movements for 15 years.

Yes, I know that S�ren S�ndergaard also sat in the outgoing EP as a replacement for Ole Krarup

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Messerschmidt, Social Liberals

Jacob Christensen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:09:02 +0000

1. Morten Messerschmidt is now as big as his posters: #2 on the all-time hit-list for personal votes in an EP election in Denmark. He is ahead of Poul Schl�ter (1994) before the big metropolitan districts have reported. Bertel Haarder (1999) and Lone Dybkj�r (1994, 1999) have also been left behind.

2. Jarl Cordua asks (well, assumes) that the Social Liberals actually performed better than they would have otherwise because of the lead candidate Sofie Carsten Nielsen. I haven’t seen any Danish research about this, but Swedish electoral researchers have discussed the topic with regard to national elections and are sceptical about the effects of candidates. However: 1. EP elections are not national elections and 2. the Danish and the Swedish electoral systems are different when it comes to personal votes. Still, Cordua is right in pointing out that we cannot say that SCN caused the Social Liberal loss because the SL share of the vote was lower in 2009 than in 2004.

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Casualties

Jacob Christensen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:29:51 +0000

For the odd non-Danish reader: The 2009 European Parliament election has its first Danish casualty as the June Movement will be calling it a day after failing to get an MEP elected.

JM was formed in 1993 in the run-up to the referendum on the Edinburgh Treaty and placed itself as a “yes-to-the-EC, no-to-the-EU” alternative to the People’s Movement’s more principled anti-EC/EU position.

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Another Very Short Note on the European Election

Jacob Christensen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:28:07 +0000

Across Europe there is some discussion about voters using the EP election to punish governments. How does this look in Denmark?

One problem is that Denmark used to have distinct national and European party systems so comparisons between elections to the Folketing and the EP are often bound to be misleading but if we look at 2004 (EP), 2005 (National), 2007 (National) and 2009 (EP), it looks like this:

Liberals 19,4 – 29,0 – 25,5 – 19,6
Conservatives: 11,3 – 10,3 – 10,4 – 12,3
Danish People’s: 6,8 – 13,3 – 13,8 – 14,8
Total: 37,5 – 53,6 – 49,7 – 46,7

Generally, the Liberals perform badly in EP elections. The “we’re Eurosceptics, no really”-take didn’t pay off here. What is new, is that the DF now has the same strength in national and EP elections.

Social Democrats: 32,6 – 25,8 – 25,5 – 20,9
Socialists: 8,0 – 6,0 – 13,0 – 15,4
Social Liberals: 6,4 – 9,2 – 5,1 – 4,1
Total: 47,0 – 41,0 – 43,6 – 40,4

The Social Democrats are back to the 1990s. Losing Poul Nyrup was too much of a handicap.

Red-Green Alliance x – 3,4 -2,2 – x
June Movement: 9,1,- x – x- 2,3
People’s Movement: 5,2 – x – x – 7,0
Total: 14,3 – 3,4 – 2,2 – 9,3

Okay, this combination isn’t fair. But you can see that the dedicated anti-EU parties have lost 5 points of the vote. Bandwagon effect for the People’s Movement.

There are some percentage points floating around, but I don’t have the time to do anything decent today.

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A Very Short Note on the Danish Votes

Jacob Christensen — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:47:15 +0000

1. If the level of turn-out really will be somewhere between 55 and 60 per cent in both elections, then I am surprised. I had expected a somewhat higher turn-out than in 2004 due to the referendum, but in the 50 to 55 per cent range.

2. I am a little surprised that close to 44 per cent of the electorate voted for the new Act of Succession. Not the distribution of the yes-to-no votes, but the level of yes-votes due to the turn-out.

3. I am not really surprised by the results in the EP election. The Social Democrats probably did worse than I expected and the Socialists better. Following the polls during the campaign, it was not a surprise that the Social Liberals and the June Movement lost their representation. But given all these polls and exit-polls, I would very much like to see somebody producing an estimate of movements between parties and to and from the couch.

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Polling Day

Jacob Christensen — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:26:45 +0000

I just cast my vote(s) in a Danish election for the first time since 1998 (the referendum on the Amsterdam Treaty).

Having polls with two different electorates is uncommon in Denmark (it happened in 2001 when local and national elections were held on the same day) but my local polling station was organised quite smoothly: First, there was a tier of voting booths for the referendum and then you passed on to a second tier of voting booths for the EP election.

The big question now is: Will the Act of Succession make it or not? The pollsters have calculated that we will need a turn-out of 52,5 per cent if the proposal is to get past the 40 per cent-hurdle. The share of no-votes looks to be surprisingly large.

The EP election is less exciting: The latest polls all show that Social Liberals and the June Movement look set to lose representation, the Social Democrats will suffer heavy losses while the Socialists and the Danish People’s Party are the big winners.

In seven hours’ time, we will know more.

Update I: Roger Buch from the College of Journalism in �rhus (or whatever that institution is called in English) asks the sensible question – why wasn’t the referendum placed in November with the local elections? Turn-out would have been around 70 per cent and the adoption of the proposal as good as certain.

Update II: Palle Svensson of �rhus University points out that a “blank” vote can be interpreted in five different ways.

PS: I have deadlines on two articles during the coming week, so don’t expect any profound postings here. Apologies.

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What Are We Voting For? A Political Scientist to the Rescue!

Jacob Christensen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:16:11 +0000

The political scientist in this case (or cage) being Henry Farrell who tells you all you need to know about the European Parliament in one blog-post. And it’s free. You even get a pint of beer thrown in for good measure.

Q: What is likely to happen in the forthcoming vote?
A: An excellent question, which should help test the predictive power of political science. In one corner: the ubiquitous Professor Hix et al predicting no very great change in the composition of the European Parliament, on the basis of analysis of multitudes of opinion polls. In the other corner, a gaggle of pundits predicting large votes against �ordinary� parties, right wing extremists doing quite nicely, and general political alarum and disorder. We�ll see who is right, starting Sunday.

PS: Okay, okay. Sorry about the beer, but you have to provide selective incentives to get people to care about the EU

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I Go Even More French

Jacob Christensen — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:18:00 +0000

Here. Your one-stop guide to the European elections.

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