Election preview: Luxembourg

There’s quite a lot happening in the electoral world, so I’m going to do a roundup post (probably two) next week. But first I wanted to quickly devote a separate post to Luxembourg, which goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a new parliament. Luxembourg is only small, but it’s an important player in the European Union and its politics are often representative of European trends (and I happen to have been there since the last time I wrote about it).

Luxembourg is also a reproach to the various media outlets that anoint as an election “winner” the party that wins the most seats. Its centre-right party, the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV), has won the most seats (and votes) at the last two elections, as indeed it has at every election for decades, but in neither case did it end up in government.

Since 2013 the government has been what the Germans refer to as a traffic-light coalition, of liberals, centre-left and Greens. At the last election, in 2018, the three parties won 49.6% between them and a bare majority of seats, 31 out of 60: 12 liberals, ten centre-left and nine Greens. Liberal leader Xavier Bettel remained as prime minister, and he is now seeking a third term. (Long tenure is not unusual in Luxembourg; his predecessor, the CSV’s Jean-Claude Juncker, held the job for nearly 18 years.)

In addition to the CSV, which won 28.3% and 21 seats, three other parties are represented in the outgoing parliament: two seats each for the Left (far left) and the Pirate Party, and four for the far-right Alternative Democratic Reform Party (ADR). But in keeping with the country’s style of politics, both far left and far right are very moderate examples of their types. Voting is proportional in each of four multi-member constituencies, which produces a slight rural bias (which favors the centre-right) plus some random unfairness – last time the centre-left won slightly more votes than the liberals but two fewer seats.

There’s not very much opinion polling, but what there is suggests little change from 2018. Since the government’s majority is so narrow, even a small change could make a big difference, but its vote seems to holding up well, although the Pirates have been making gains at the expense of the Greens. That’s also consistent with the local elections, held four months ago, in which the three government parties won 54.6% of the vote between them, with the CSV dropping to 26.1%.

Luxembourg’s politicians are a flexible lot; if the governing coalition should fall below the 31-seat mark, it’s likely that one (or more) of its members would be happy to team up with the CSV instead. And a demonstration that mainstream parties can both work together and retain the confidence of the electorate would be a very useful thing.