Marine Le Pen to win EU Parliament election in France

She hasn’t won yet, but if her party doesn’t beat Macron’s, it will be a huge surprise.

Early projections of the French vote tell us to expect Le Pen’s National Rally to come first and overcome the party of the French President. So far National Rally (previously known as National Front party) got something like 24 percent of the vote. Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance list is at about 22 percent. Close, but not enough.

The victory of Le Pen’s far-right party over centrist-liberal party of the President is a great reason to celebrate for Euroskeptic forces. It was actually highly expected that National Rally would be front and center of the European wave of populists. Far-right parties are said to take up to a third of the seats in the European Parliament. Le Pen’s party is expected to be joined by Matteo Salvini’s far-right League in Italy.

Far-right forces also take theirs in Germany, according to early results. This year Alternative for Germany (AfD) is to gain ten seats compared to three with 2014. Their success became possible because Germany’s Social Democrats collapsed greatly. It is expected to leave center-left with little to no chances to overtake the center-right European People’s Party in the European Parliament. All because social democrats couldn’t gain necessary seats in the largest EU country.

Socialists at the time still have a reason to smile. Progressive Socialist Workers’ Party, led but the President of Spain Pedro Sánchez, is heading for a strong victory over the conservatives. Workers’ Party is winning almost 29 percent and can take 18 seats (plus four seats) in the Parliament. The conservative People’s Party lost five seats and gets 11 seats with 17.3 percent of votes.

Liberal Spanish Ciudadanos Party is predicted to gain 16 percent, the left-sided Podemos party is up to 12 percent, and the far-right Vox Party is almost at 7 percent. That would give the liberals nine seats, the leftists seven seats and the far-right four seats.