2014 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom

The 2014 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2014 European Parliament election, held on Thursday 22 May 2014,^[2]^[3] coinciding with the 2014 local elections in England^[4] and Northern Ireland. In total, 73 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation. England, Scotland and Wales use a closed-list party list system of PR (with the D'Hondt method), while Northern Ireland used the single transferable vote (STV).

Registered46,481,532^{[n 1]}

Turnout35.6%^[1]

0.9%

Quick facts All 73 United Kingdom seats to the European Parliament, Registered ...

2014 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom

← 2009

22 May 2014

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elected members →

All 73 United Kingdom seats to the European Parliament

Registered

46,481,532^{[n 1]}

Turnout

35.6%^[1]

0.9%

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Nigel Farage	Glenis Willmott	Syed Kamall
Party	UKIP	Labour	Conservative
Alliance	EFDD	S&D	ECR
Leader since	5 November 2010	18 January 2009	19 November 2013
Leader's seat	South East England	East Midlands	London
Last election	13 seats, 16.0%	13 seats, 15.2%	26 seats,^[a] 27.4%
Seats won	24	20	19
Seat change	11	7	7
Popular vote	4,376,635	4,020,646	3,792,549
Percentage	26.6%	24.4%	23.1%
Swing	10.6%	9.2%	4.3%

	Fourth party	Fifth party	Sixth party

Leader	Jean Lambert^[b]	Fiona Hall	Ian Hudghton^[c]
Party	Green	Liberal Democrats	SNP
Alliance	Green	ALDE	EFA
Leader since	6 May 2010	21 July 2009	June 1999
Leader's seat	London	North East England	Scotland
Last election	2 seats, 7.8%	11 seats, 13.3%	2 seats, 2.1%
Seats before	2	11	2
Seats won	3	1	2
Seat change	1	10
Popular vote	1,136,670	1,087,633	389,503
Percentage	6.9%	6.6%	2.3%
Swing	0.9%	6.7%	0.3%

Map of the 2014 European Parliamentary Election in the United Kingdom

Leader of Largest Party before election

David Cameron
Conservative

Subsequent Leader of Largest Party

Nigel Farage
UKIP

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Most of the election results were announced after 10pm on Sunday 25 May – with the exception of Scotland, which did not declare its results until the following day – after voting closed throughout the 28 member states of the European Union.

The most successful party overall was the UK Independence Party (UKIP) which won 24 seats and 27% of the popular vote, the first time a political party other than the Labour Party or Conservative Party had won the popular vote at a British election since the 1906 general election.^[5]^[6] It was also the first time a party other than Labour or Conservative had won the largest number of seats in a national election since the December 1910 general election.^[7]^[8]^[9] In addition, the 23.1% of the vote won by the Conservatives was the lowest recorded vote share for the party in a national election until 2019.

The Labour Party became the first Official Opposition party since 1984 to fail to win a European Parliament election, although it did gain 7 seats, taking its overall tally to 20. The governing Conservative Party was pushed into third place for the first time at any European Parliament election, falling to 19 seats, while the Green Party of England and Wales saw its number of MEPs increase for the first time since 1999, winning 3 seats. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party won the largest share of the vote, taking 29% of the vote and 2 MEPs. The Liberal Democrats, who were in government in the UK with the Conservatives at the time, lost 10 of the 11 seats they were defending, and won just 7% of the popular vote.

Figures released in December 2014 showed that the Conservatives and UKIP each spent £2.96m on the campaign, the Liberal Democrats £1.5m, and the Labour Party approximately £1m.^[10]

Voting system and regional representation

The United Kingdom elected 73 Members of the European Parliament using proportional representation. The United Kingdom was divided into twelve multi-member constituencies. The eleven of these regions which form Great Britain used a closed-list party list system method of proportional representation, calculated using the D'Hondt method. Northern Ireland used the Single transferable vote (STV). As a result of the Treaty of Lisbon coming into force, the UK became entitled to a 73rd MEP as from November 2011. The Electoral Commission performed a reallocation in keeping with the same procedures it used to allocate 72 MEPs; an extra Conservative MEP was allocated to the West Midlands constituency, based on the 2009 vote, and was enshrined in the European Union Act 2011 as an amendment of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002.^{[citation needed]}

More information Electoral region, 2009 election ...

Representation by region
Electoral region	2009 election	2014 election	+/-
East Midlands	5	5
East of England	7	7
London	8	8
North East England	3	3
North West England	8	8
South East England	10	10
South West England¹	6	6
West Midlands	6	7	1
Yorkshire and the Humber	6	6
Wales	4	4
Scotland	6	6
Northern Ireland	3	3

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¹ Includes Gibraltar, the only British Overseas Territory which was part of the European Union.

Returning officers

The European Parliamentary Elections (Returning Officers) Order 2013 provides for the designated Returning officer for each electoral region to be the council official responsible for elections in each of the following Westminster constituencies: Kettering for the East Midlands, Chelmsford for the Eastern region, Lewisham, Deptford for the London region, Sunderland Central for the North East region, Manchester Central for the North West region, Falkirk for Scotland, Southampton, Test for the South East region, Poole for the South West region, Preseli Pembrokeshire for Wales, Birmingham Ladywood for the West Midlands region, Leeds Central for the Yorkshire and Humber region, and Belfast South for the Northern Ireland Region.^[11]

MEPs before the 2014 election, by European Parliament group

Between the 2009 and 2014 elections, there were various changes to the breakdown of UK members. In December 2011, a 73rd member from the UK (Anthea McIntyre, Conservative) was allocated to England because of the implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon. There were also various defections:

one Conservative MEP (Edward McMillan-Scott) defected to the Liberal Democrats (March 2010);^[12]
one Conservative MEP (Roger Helmer) defected to UKIP (March 2012);
two UKIP MEPs (David Campbell Bannerman in May 2011^[13] and Marta Andreasen in February 2013) defected to the Conservatives;^[14]
one UKIP MEP (Nikki Sinclaire) left the party, and later founded the We Demand a Referendum party;
one UKIP MEP (Mike Nattrass) left the party in September 2013, and later founded An Independence from Europe;^[15]
one UKIP MEP (Godfrey Bloom) left the party in September 2013, and sat as an independent;^[16]
one BNP MEP (Andrew Brons) left the party, and later founded the British Democratic Party.

The Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force (UCUNF) electoral pact between the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) was dissolved.

Thus, before the 2014 election, the following parties had MEPs representing UK constituencies:

More information United Kingdom party, Seats/73 ...

Parties in the European Parliament (UK) before the 2014 election Archived 3 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine
United Kingdom party		Seats/73	European Parliament group		Seats/766
	Conservative	26		European Conservatives and Reformists	52
	UUP	1		European Conservatives and Reformists	52
	Labour	13		Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats	195
	Liberal Democrats	12		Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe	75
	UKIP	9		Europe of Freedom and Democracy	31
	Independent	1		Europe of Freedom and Democracy	31
	Green	2		Greens–European Free Alliance	52
	Scottish National	2
	Plaid Cymru	1
	Sinn Féin	1		European United Left–Nordic Green Left	35
	Democratic Unionist	1		Non-Inscrits	–
	British Democratic	1			–
	British National	1			–
	We Demand a Referendum	1			–
	An Independence from Europe	1			–

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Parties and candidates

39 parties stood a total of 747 candidates. The Conservative Party and UKIP had candidates in every region, as did the three Green parties. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the BNP had a full slate of candidates in all the regions in Great Britain (i.e. excluding Northern Ireland). The English Democrats and An Independence from Europe had a full slate of candidates in all the English regions. No2EU had a full slate in seven regions, while Britain First and the Socialist Party of Great Britain had full slates in two regions each. The Harmony Party stood in four regions and the Christian Peoples Alliance in three regions. Other parties only stood in one region.

Retiring/resigned incumbents

British Democratic Party

(Elected in 2009 as British National Party)

Andrew Brons – Yorkshire and the Humber

Conservative

Green

Caroline Lucas (South East England) – Resigned 17 May 2010 & replaced by Keith Taylor

Labour

Liberal Democrats

Diana Wallis (Yorkshire and the Humber) – Resigned 31 January 2012^[22] & replaced by Rebecca Taylor
Liz Lynne (West Midlands) – Resigned 4 February 2012^[23] & replaced by Phil Bennion
Sharon Bowles – (South East England)^[24]
Rebecca Taylor (Yorkshire and the Humber)
Fiona Hall (North East England)

UKIP

John Bufton (Wales)^[25]
Trevor Colman (South West England and Gibraltar)
Derek Clark (East Midlands)^[26]
Godfrey Bloom (Yorkshire & Humber), Having spent the last 8 months of his term as an independent^[27]^[28]

Debates

On 20 February, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg used his weekly phone-in show on LBC 97.3 to challenge the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, to a live public debate on the UK's membership of the European Union.^[29] Clegg said, "he is the leader of the party of 'out'; I am the leader of the party of 'in'. I think it's time we now have a proper, public debate so that the public can listen to the two sides of the argument and judge from themselves."^[30]^[31] Farage accepted, but said he would also like to see Ed Miliband and David Cameron participate.^[32]

The first hour-long debate between the two men was held on 26 March 2014 and was broadcast live on television by Sky News and on the BBC News Channel. The debate was hosted by LBC and moderated by Nick Ferrari.^[33] After the first debate, a YouGov poll asked "Who performed better?", with 57% saying Farage did better compared to 36% for Clegg.

The second debate was held on BBC Two on 2 April in a special programme called The European Union: In or Out, moderated by David Dimbleby. Farage was again seen as outperforming his rival, with a snap poll by YouGov showing 68% of people thought he did better in the debate compared to 27% for Clegg. A snap Guardian poll also showed that 69% thought Farage won the debate.^[34]

Despite David Cameron and Ed Miliband declining to participate in the leaders' debates, the Conservative and Labour parties were represented in a lower-profile debate on the BBC. On 13 February Andrew Neil hosted a four-way debate on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme. The Conservatives were represented by Syed Kamall MEP, Labour by Richard Howitt MEP, the Liberal Democrats by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP and the UK Independence Party by Patrick O'Flynn, the party's Director of communications and an MEP candidate.^[35]^[36]

Opinion polls

Graphical summary

These opinion polls are for Great Britain and generally exclude Northern Ireland. The methodology used for these polls broadly corresponds to that used for opinion polling for the 2015 United Kingdom general election; see that article for the methodology used by each polling company. YouGov have experimented with different methods of polling for these elections, using their own method for their 8–9 January 2013 poll and another corresponding to that used by Survation and ComRes for their 10–11 January 2013 poll (both below) and argue that their method gives more accurate answers.^[37] Data for these polls are generally gathered at the same time as the data for General Election polling.