What did we learn from the von der Leyen vote?

Counting the votes. That is what everybody did the entire day before the real vote started in the European Parliament on the candidacy of Ursula von der Leyen to become president of the European Commission.

It was the first time in decades that the vote on the commission presidency was that unsure.

All previous commission presidents since the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, Jacques Santer, Romano Prodi, Jose Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Juncker, were backed by a solid majority. <...