Bloomberg

The stakes are high for this year’s elections to the European Parliament, with widespread predictions that a growing chorus of populists will see historic gains at the expense of establishment parties. Yet a Bloomberg analysis suggests that even a strong showing won’t necessarily translate into power over legislation, and the European Union ballot might instead prove to be the high-water mark for the insurgents.

Italy’s Matteo Salvini is among those talking up the likelihood of an anti-establishment surge in May, a result that could steer policy-making away from the so-called mainstream in favor of his agenda opposing immigration and further European integration. In doing so, he’s turning the EU-wide vote into a test of the shared values of the populist-nationalist insurrection he aspires to lead.

One of the first key challenges will be navigating the political ambitions of the many populist groups contesting the vote. They number approximately 50 across the EU’s 27 post-Brexit members, according to Bloomberg reporting academic experts. Unifying these diffuse forces will be necessary if they hope to wield Parliament’s powers over the bloc’s 140 billion-euro ($158 billion) annual budget, or on matters from trade agreements to energy.

Six countries collectively account for more than 60 percent of the current populist members of the European Parliament. Recent polling and historical performance suggest that populist parties will increase their number of seats in these countries by half. Extrapolate across the EU and such parties would capture more than 30 percent of the new Parliament’s 705 seats, a rounding error away from former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s aim of creating a nationalist-populist bulwark against further integration, and so taking control of the European agenda.

Drill down, however, and the picture is far more nuanced: France’s National Rally—formerly the National Front—and Hungary’s Fidesz are broadly flat. In fact, the bulk of the gains projected in this study come down to one party: Salvini’s League. And while Europe’s populist parties almost universally share nationalist, EU-skeptic and anti-immigration characteristics, some hail from opposing sides of the traditional left-right political spectrum, making collaboration questionable.

What’s more, most have shown themselves unwilling or unable to coordinate in the past. One warning sign for Salvini and his allies: the sheer number of populist MEPs—one-third of the total—who’ve defected to mainstream parties or founded splinter groups since 2014. To succeed, populists will need to avoid the internal power struggles and ideological disagreements that have diminished their influence in this legislative term.

To start with, consider the incoming class of 161 populist MEPs after 2014.. At more than 20 percent of all seats, this set a new record.

As is the custom, most MEPs organized themselves into one of several parliamentary umbrella groups. The groups are arranged relative to where each lies on the political spectrum, with seats typically assigned in alphabetical order starting at the front.

The two largest mainstream blocs, the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats, which includes the U.K. Labour Party, plus the center-right European People’s Party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, still dominated the chamber in 2014 with a combined 55 percent of seats, though this was down 6 percentage points from 2009. Hungarian Prime Minsiter Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party is allied to the EPP, limiting its ability to blow things up.

Populists on the left are concentrated in the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group, which includes Greece’s Syriza and Spain’s Podemos. Few, if any, can be found among the Greens/European Free Alliance, home to Austria’s Greens and the Scottish National Party, or the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, where the Dutch ruling VVD sit.

Populist MEPs were most concentrated in two particular groups. They gained a slim majority in the European Conservatives and Reformists, the third-largest group and home to Poland’s Law & Justice party, and controlled 46 of 48 seats in Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy thanks to strong results for the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) and Italy’s Five Star Movement.

Seen all together, populists gravitated to the more EU-skeptic groups on the far left and the far right of the chamber (and, correspondingly, of the political spectrum). Several newly elected populist MEPs were also concentrated in the non-aligned corner of the chamber, at least at first.

Fast forward to the present chamber, marked by a much-reduced EFDD populist contingent and a new group called the Europe of Nations and Freedom, launched in mid-2015 by France’s Marine Le Pen to bind together formerly non-aligned MEPs from her National Front, Italy’s League, the Dutch Freedom Party, Austria’s Freedom Party and others. Leaders from these same parties met in Koblenz, Germany in early 2017 and later that same year in Prague to try to solidify their new populist power center.

Even as the ENF was establishing itself, the balance of power was moving against the populists. Since 2014, there have been at least 47 defections from populist national parties, including nearly half of UKIP’s MEPs. Many moved toward the mainstream, even if few actually left for more pro-EU groups.

In the run-up to this year’s elections, Salvini has met with Le Pen and Orban, as well as made overtures to the Sweden Democrats and several other parties. But even if he succeeds in coalescing these populist forces, there’s a limit to how far he, and they, can push their mutual distrust of the EU and its institutions without alienating their respective electorates. For European voters although disaffected with establishment politics, a record number of them are actually pro-EU.

According to the latest Eurobarometer survey conducted by the European Commission in November, 68 percent of people across the union said their countries had on balance benefited from EU membership. In a separate question, a majority of respondents in 21 countries said membership was a good thing—up from 13 countries in 2014.

Part of this may be attributable to a Brexit bump, with the messy, drawn-out negotiations and warnings of the impact on the U.K. economy serving as a recruitment ad for the EU. Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, there’s been an average 8.5-point increase in the share of people saying EU membership is a good thing, with only four countries registering declines.

That’s not to say that populists can’t surprise at the ballot box. Elections to the EU Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg are seen as occasions ripe for voters to register anger at national governments without any perceived downside. Yet the focus on this year’s European voting may paradoxically serve to show what is at stake, with a far-right bloc potentially upsetting the process for choosing the European Commission, the EU’s executive body responsible for trade, antitrust and economic matters; and stalling agreement on the bloc’s trillion-euro long-term budget.

Indeed, Bloomberg’s analysis found that populists made gains in a majority of EU member states in the 2014 vote and over-performed compared with their most recent prior national election in 20 countries—an impressive track record, but undermined by subsequent erosion in 10 countries.

Populists now control or support governments in 11 EU members. Whether they can hold on to the MEPs they get elected this time around is what ultimately will decide if they’re able to change the direction of the European Parliament—and by consequence the EU—or if they’re destined to remain on the fringes of power.