Disenchanted voters help small parties take seats in EU election

By Amanda Hoover, Carly Metz and Mackenzie Nichols

MADRID – Despite predictions that Spain’s Popular Party and Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party would maintain their hold over Spain’s representation in the EU Parliament, smaller parties stole 24 seats in Sunday’s election.

At one of nearly 3,000 polling places in greater Madrid, a man places his vote at Colegio Reina Victoria, a school, in the Salamanca neighborhood. By 3 p.m., he was one of 150 voters to cast his ballot in this particular zone. Photo by Carly Metz.

On what has been dubbed “Super Sunday,” 20 of the 28 European Union member states voted to elect or reelect members to the 751 seats of the European Parliament. An uncharacteristically low 46 percent of voting-eligible Spaniards turned out to send 54 delegates to Parliament. Frustrations with Spanish politicians and their lack of leadership resulted in major gains for fringe parties, experts say.

“Institutions [in the EU] are far away. It’s a very complex process. Many do not understand very well what happens there and the impact,” said Francisco Javier Moreno Fuentes, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies at the Spanish National Research Council, or CSIC, in Madrid. “In theory, citizens should be thinking about what is best to do on the European level. This should happen in every country. But in fact, what happens is the opposite. People are thinking more in national terms than European terms.”

The trend was seen across Europe, with peripheral parties gaining ground while populists and socialists suffered. The European People’s Party – which is also the ruling party in Spain – lost 55 seats, while the Party of European Socialists lost another 32.