The Pirate Party lost my vote because they focused more on antics than politics; i.e. that they would host the piratebay and wikileaks from within the parliament.
The Pirate Party has alienated those who supported them not because they want to legalize filesharing, but because they had a strong stance on personal integrity, privacy and so forth.
They've lost their focus, and with it their credibility, I'm sorry to say.
While at first sight it would suggest less people support the party now compared to last year, you've got to remember that fringe groups like the Pirate Party often do better in EU elections than they do in national elections, which has a substantially higher turnout of mainstream voters.
The party has a very clear highly racist agenda and yet they received upwards of 20% in some regions. It's quite depressing that people would give up their privacy in favor of "not having that foreigner in the neighborhood".
The interesting thing is that the places where they got a lot of votes hardly have any immigrants at all - it's a splendid example of being afraid of the unknown and how that fear is used by extremists.
The same was true in the Netherlands, the party of Geert Wilders (with an unrealistic, but popular, national/socialist program, with elements from both far-right and far-left) received the most votes in places with the most homogeneous population, where there are almost no immigrants. In places with the most immigrants the socialists and progressives won. Interesting fact: The day after the elections Wilders dropped most of the left side of his election program.
This makes me wonder if "voting" is actually any good, is it really "democratic"? Maybe if a vote was actually an informed choice, but most people just go with whomever is the most popular or promises them the moon on a stick. Realism, reason, legality, etc does not matter. Perhaps "voting" is not democratic at all if the people are basically ignorant, shortsighted, easily swayed by (the illusion of) popularity, fearful, during times of uncertainty and with many doubts about the future; We already see a kind of political aristocracy in most western democracies, the sons of presidents becoming presidents. Maybe that a demarchy would have been a better idea?
The Pirate Party has alienated those who supported them not because they want to legalize filesharing, but because they had a strong stance on personal integrity, privacy and so forth.
They've lost their focus, and with it their credibility, I'm sorry to say.