How did the political polls at European elections 2024? Pretty bad, with none of the hundreds of investigations carried out coming close to being sufficient. However, the exit polls and subsequent projections fared better.
If we look at the latest political polls carried out before the stop to their diffusion – the ban was in force in the two weeks preceding it even if “secret” investigations continued to circulate anyway – there are two blunders that catch the eye .
The most obvious concerns the 5 Star Movementindicated by polls as well above the 15% threshold and which instead failed to reach double figures in the European elections, stopping at 9.98%.
The second is that relating to the data of Democratic partyon the contrary clearly underestimated: for the institutions the Dems were sailing around 20%, four percentage points less than the response at the polls.
Other errors then concerned the lists whose aim was to exceed the threshold. Also in this case the polls were unable to detect the growth of Green Left Allianceindicating both instead United States of Europe is Action beyond the barrier threshold.
We all know how it ended: the red-greens who risked not exceeding the 4% bar took 6.78%, while Matteo Renzi And Carlo Calenda they remained outside the European Parliament.
Political polls: what went wrong in the European elections?
The mistakes made by political polls in Italy, as regards the European elections, they were paired with those committed – almost simultaneously – in India, where the erroneous forecasts of Prime Minister Modi’s victory would have caused, according to Bloomberg, a “collapse of 386 billion dollars in a single day”.
As we took the liberty of pointing out before the vote, the many candidates of depth of the Democratic Party in these European elections – several outgoing mayors as well as a regional president such as Stefano Bonaccini and the former secretary Nicola Zingaretti, all subsequently elected by preferences -, made it clear that the Democratic Party would fare much better than expected.
On the contrary, the 5 Star Movement, which chose its candidates through the usual online vote and did not have any notable names on its list, paid its dues at the polls as we hypothesized also by virtue of the strong abstention especially in the South where the Five Star Movement has always been very strong.
In Sardinia and in Sicily 37 and 38% of those entitled to vote respectively voted, despite the fact that in Cagliari, Sassari, Caltanissetta, Gela and many other municipalities people also voted for administrative elections.
These aspects have led political polls into error, but the abstention factor also raises questions about the actual truthfulness of these European elections.
With the data incredibly still partial, across the EU, only 51% of eligible voters voted in the 2024 European elections. This means that approximately 185 million EU citizens preferred to desert their seats.
The figure was then pushed up by the fact that in many countries – such as Italy – the European elections were merged with the local elections or even political as in the case of Belgium where, not surprisingly, there was the highest turnout: almost 90%.
In Hungary only 21% of those entitled to vote voted Latvia 28% and more Bulgaria 34%. Even in the larger countries things didn’t go much better: said of Italy, in France the figure was 51.5%, in Spain by 49% and right in Germany it reached 65%.
What value can a European Parliament elected by only half of the citizens? Naturally the choice not to go to vote was voluntary, but the European Chamber will certainly not be fully representative of the true popular will.
Politics and subsequently polls would seem to be increasingly detached from real life, when instead they should be the first to understand what the people’s true feelings and their related needs are. Having obtained the lucrative seat in the European Parliament, most of the good intentions waved during the election campaign will now remain so only on paper, with the turnout figure inevitably being even lower in 2029.
