If one trend is emerging from the early results and exit polls of the European Parliament elections, it is that ruling political parties are in for an uncomfortable night. Voters are deserting them in droves and transferring their support either to mainstream opposition parties or to protest groups and extremists.
Put another way, voters have used the elections as a chance to state their feelings about current conditions in their respective countries. There has been nothing particularly “European” about the way they have cast their ballots.
This is especially striking in Ireland and Latvia, which – together with Hungary – are the European Union countries most seriously affected by the global financial crisis. In Ireland, the ruling Fianna Fáil party and its Greens coalition partner have taken an absolute drubbing in local elections held simultaneously with the European vote. In Dublin, a leftist Sinn Féin candidate known for her hostile attitude to European integration looks likely to win one of Ireland’s 12 European Parliament seats.
In Latvia, which has eight seats, all but one of the ruling coalition’s five parties have been punished by voters for presiding over an economy that looks set to contract by a mind-boggling 20 per cent this year. Meanwhile, a party representing the country’s large Russian-speaking minority has done well.
We saw a similar protest vote last Thursday in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders and his anti-Islamic Party for Freedom scooped up four of the 25 Dutch seats in the EU legislature.
Still, we need to keep things in perspective. Experts predicted before the election that anti-EU candidates and extreme nationalists would win about 50 seats in the 736-seat parliament. That is the figure to keep in mind. If it rises significantly higher than 50, then this will have been a grim night for European democracy. If it is around 50, it will look bad, but it will mostly be a kick in the teeth for governments that have held power while the economic crisis has been at its height.
Across the globe: Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on