Parliamentary election in Belgium 2014
The election to the Belgian Chamber of Deputies took place on May 25, 2014, the same day as the 2014 European elections . At the same time, the Flemish Parliament and the parliaments of Wallonia , Brussels and the German-speaking Community were re-elected.
initial situation
After the election on June 13, 2010 , eleven parties entered the Chamber of Deputies, six Dutch-speaking and five French-speaking parties. In Flanders , the nationalist N-VA became the largest party, followed by the Christian Democratic CD&V . The social democratic sp.a and the liberal Open Vld became third and fourth strongest parties, respectively; the smaller parties were the right-wing Vlaams Belang , the ecological Groen and the libertarian small party LDD .
In the south ( Wallonia region ) the social democratic PS received the most votes, followed by the liberal MR , the Christian democratic CDH , the ecological Ecolo and a small party, the Parti Populaire .
After the elections - after a struggle of 541 days (until December 2011) - PS, CD&V, MR, sp.a, Open Vld and CDH formed the Di Rupo government .
Innovations
On January 31, 2014, several constitutional amendments came into force. As a result, the Senate will no longer have any directly elected members and, consequently, the election of the Chamber of Deputies will no longer take place at the same time as the election of Senators. The legislative period has been extended from four to five years and the election to the Chamber of Deputies is to take place in parallel to the European elections .
The controversial Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde constituency , which crosses language borders, was dissolved.
For the first time since 1991, the FDF , previously part of the French-speaking Liberals, is running again independently.
Electoral system
Each province and the capital region of Brussels , which has not belonged to any province since 1995, each form a constituency. In each constituency, the seats are distributed proportionally using the D'Hondt method . There is a 5% hurdle. In the smaller constituencies, however, it is possible that a party with a share of the vote well over 5% will not get a seat.
This regulation was introduced in 2002, but did not apply in the 2003, 2007 and 2010 elections in the area of the former province of Brabant . Following the dissolution of the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde constituency , there will again be a uniform electoral system for the entire country from the 2014 election. However, the residents of six municipalities belonging to Flemish Brabant can also vote for a list in the Brussels constituency.
According to the constitution, the number of representatives per constituency is determined by royal decree every 10 years according to the population (including foreigners). Since Brussels has a far above-average proportion of foreigners, the number of persons entitled to vote per seat is smaller there than in the rest of the country. According to the royal decree of January 31, 2013, the seats are distributed among the constituencies as follows:
- Brussels Capital Region 15 seats
Flanders (87 seats in total)
- West Flanders Province 16 seats
- East Flanders Province 20 seats
- Antwerp Province 24 seats
- Limburg Province 12 seats
- Province of Flemish Brabant 15 seats
Wallonia (48 seats in total)
- Walloon Brabant Province 5 seats
- Hainaut Province 18 seats
- Namur Province 6 seats
- Luxembourg Province 4 seats
- Liege Province 15 seats
Each voter can choose a list by either choosing the list as a whole or by giving any number of applicants a preference vote within a list.
Survey
Flanders
| date | Client | N-VA | CD&V | spa | OpenVLD | VB | Great | PVDA + | LDD | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05/22/2014 | De Morgen , VTM, Le Soir , RTL | 29.8 | 17.1 | 15.0 | 14.2 | 8.8 | 8.4 | 3.4 | ||
| 05/16/2014 | De Standaard , VRT | 31.9 | 19.7 | 14.9 | 13.7 | 7.7 | 9.2 | 2.6 | ||
| 04/25/2014 | De Standaard , VRT | 32.2 | 16.4 | 14.3 | 15.1 | 6.8 | 10.5 | 2.3 | ||
| 04/23/2014 | De Morgen , VTM, Le Soir , RTL | 32.8 | 17.6 | 13.5 | 13.5 | 10.3 | 8.7 | 3.4 | ||
| 04/15/2014 | RTBF , La Libre Belgique | 32.9 | 16.9 | 13.6 | 13.5 | 9.9 | 7.6 | 4.1 | 0.2 | 1.3 |
| 06/10/2010 | Election 2010 | 28.0 | 17.6 | 15.3 | 13.7 | 12.6 | 7.1 | 1.4 | 3.8 | 0.5 |
Wallonia
| date | Client | PS | MR | CDH | Ecolo | PP | PTB-GO! | FDF | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05/22/2014 | De Morgen , VTM, Le Soir , RTL | 28.8 | 21.0 | 13.3 | 9.1 | 5.7 | 8.3 | 4.5 | 9.3 |
| 04/23/2014 | De Morgen , VTM, Le Soir , RTL | 28.9 | 23.3 | 13.7 | 10.9 | 7.0 | 9.2 | 2.5 | 4.5 |
| 04/15/2014 | RTBF , La Libre Belgique | 29.3 | 22.6 | 9.4 | 11.0 | 5.4 | 8.1 | 2.7 | 11.5 |
| 06/10/2010 | Election 2010 | 37.6 | 22.2 | 14.6 | 12.3 | 3.1 | 1.9 | - | 8.3 |
Brussels
| date | Client | MR | PS | CDH | Ecolo | FDF | PP | PTB-GO! PVDA + |
Open VLD |
spa | N-VA | VB | CD&V | Great | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05/22/2014 | De Morgen , VTM, Le Soir , RTL | 20.8 | 18.2 | 9.7 | 10.5 | 11.3 | 3.2 | 4.2 | 4.4 | 2.8 | 2.8 | 2.1 | 1.1 | ||
| 04/23/2014 | De Morgen , VTM, Le Soir , RTL | 20.3 | 22.5 | 9.8 | 9.6 | 9.3 | 3.9 | 6.0 | |||||||
| 04/15/2014 | RTBF , La Libre Belgique | 20.2 | 17.6 | 11.6 | 8.0 | 8.3 | 4.1 | 7.2 | 3.8 | 1.1 | 2.1 | 3.0 | 2.1 | 1.9 | 9.0 |
| 06/10/2010 | Election 2010 | 27.1 | 26.6 | 12.2 | 12.0 | [MR] | 3.5 | 1.6 | 2.3 | 2.0 | 1.8 | 1.7 | 1.6 | 1.6 | 6.0 |
Result
With substantial gains, the N-VA became by far the strongest party in Flanders and all of Belgium. The governing coalition of socialists, liberals and Christian democrats from both language groups was able to expand its majority to 97 of the 150 seats. Vlaams Belang suffered heavy losses.
| Political party | Flanders | Brussels | Wallonia | BELGIUM | Seats | +/- | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| % | % | % | be right | % | +/- | ||||
| N-VA | 32.4 | 2.7 | 1,366,414 | 20.26 | 2.86 | 33 | 6 | ||
| PS | 24.9 | 32.0 | 787.165 | 11.67 | 2.05 | 23 | 3 | ||
| CD&V | 18.6 | 1.6 | 783.060 | 11.61 | 0.77 | 18th | 1 | ||
| Open Vld | 15.5 | 2.7 | 659,582 | 9.78 | 1.17 | 14th | 1 | ||
| MR | 23.1 | 25.8 | 650.290 | 9.64 | 0.31 | 20th | 2 | ||
| spa | 14.0 | 1.9 | 595.486 | 8.83 | 0.36 | 13 | |||
| Great | 8.6 | 358,947 | 5.32 | 0.94 | 6th | 1 | |||
| cdH | 9.3 | 14.0 | 336.281 | 4.99 | 0.59 | 9 | |||
| PTB-GO! / PVDA + | 2.8 | 3.8 | 5.5 | 251.289 | 3.72 | 2.17 | 2 | 2 | |
| Vlaams Belang | 5.8 | 1.0 | 247,746 | 3.67 | 4.06 | 3 | 9 | ||
| Ecolo | 10.4 | 8.2 | 222,551 | 3.30 | 1.50 | 6th | 2 | ||
| FDF | 0.4 | 11.1 | 2.4 | 121,403 | 1.80 | New | 2 | 2 | |
| Parti Populaire | 1.7 | 4.5 | 102,599 | 1.51 | 0.24 | 1 | |||
| Others | 1.9 | 5.7 | 7.6 | 262.219 | 3.89 | 1.71 | 0 | 1 | |
| Valid votes | 6,745,059 | 94.24 | |||||||
| Invalid votes | 412,439 | 5.76 | |||||||
| Votes cast | 7,157,498 | 100.00 | - | 150 | |||||
| Number of eligible voters and turnout | 8.001.278 | 89.45 | 0.23 | ||||||
Linguistic differences
Results by electoral canton
Elections to the Chamber of Deputies have been held in 11 constituencies since 2003. The members of the 150-seat parliament, which is divided into two language groups ( Dutch and French ), are directly elected by the population of the individual constituencies. The following electoral map shows the eleven Belgian constituencies (thick line) and the parties with the highest number of votes in the individual electoral cantons. The Brussels-Capital constituency has been enlarged:
Indirect election to the Senate
After the election to the Senate by the individual parliaments of the regions and communities, the new Senate was constituted on July 3, 2014. It consisted of 30 women and 30 men, making it the first House of Lords in the world in which at least the same number of women and men were represented.
Government formation
On October 7, 2014, N-VA, CD&V, MR and Open Vld agreed to form a new government. Charles Michel (MR) will be the new Prime Minister . The coalition has 85 of the 150 seats. While the new government can rely on 65 of the 87 Flemish MPs, the MR, as the only French-speaking party involved, has only 20 of the 63 MPs for the French-speaking parties. The Francophone Christian Democrats (cdH) had refused to rule with the N-VA. For the first time in a long time, the socialists are absent from the government. Most recently, from 1981 to 1988, there were governments without socialist participation.
Web links
- Path through the election jungle in Belgium
- Belgium: a brief overview of the structure
- On May 25 the website of the Parliament of the German-speaking Community will be elected
- Annette Riedel : Elections in Belgium - An almost ungovernable multi-ethnic state , Deutschlandfunk - “ Background ” from May 24, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ Current constitutional text with change history
- ^ Royal Decree of January 31, 2013
- ↑ Le Soir: Grand Baromètre: la N-VA sous la barre des 30%
- ↑ De Standaard: Politieke Barometer mei 2014
- ↑ De Standaard: Politieke Barometer April 2014
- ↑ Le Soir: Grand Baromètre: la N-VA garde la forme, PTB et PP poussent en Wallonie
- ↑ RTBF: Baromètre politique: la N-VA solid, le PTB-GO conquérant
- ^ RTBF , parts of the vote without the Flemish part of the former constituency of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde
- ↑ Le Soir: Grand Baromètre: la N-VA sous la barre des 30%
- ↑ Le Soir: Grand Baromètre: la N-VA garde la forme, PTB et PP poussent en Wallonie
- ↑ RTBF: Baromètre politique: la N-VA solid, le PTB-GO conquérant
- ↑ Het Laatste Nieuws: Laatste peiling: N-VA zakt nipt onder 30 percent
- ↑ Le Soir: Grand Baromètre: la N-VA garde la forme, PTB et PP poussent en Wallonie
- ↑ RTBF: Baromètre politique: la N-VA solid, le PTB-GO conquérant