The prediction, released on Wednesday by PollWatch2014 - a VoteWatch Europe initiative partly funded by the European parliament - suggests that the EPP group is currently ahead of the socialist S&D grouping by eleven seats.
The latest PollWatch2014 forecast suggests that the S&D group will finish with 205 seats in the new parliament and the EPP group - the largest in the previous parliamentary term - will end up with 216 seats.
The results, say the group of political science researchers involved - Kevin Cunningham, Simon Hix and Michael Marsh – show that in the final week of opinion polls on the EU elections, S&D affiliated parties have lost ground in France and Poland, while EPP linked parties have gained in Spain, Romania and Poland.
"Where the other [main] groups are concerned, ALDE remain third, ahead of GUE-NGL in fourth, while the ECR, Greens/EFA and EFD are now neck-and-neck for fifth place", said Cunningham and Hix.
"In the final week of opinion polls on the EU elections, S&D affiliated parties have lost ground in France and Poland, while EPP linked parties have gained in Spain, Romania and Poland"
Their research also suggests that the final make-up of the 'group' affiliations in the new parliament is still relatively unclear, due to the uncertainty over where many of the incoming wave of eurosceptic and protest party MEPs will choose to sit.
"It is still not clear", say the political researchers, "where Beppe Grillo's [Italian] Five Star Movement (M5S) will sit. Standing on 21 seats in our latest forecast, many groups will be eager to attract his MEPs."
The current uncertainty over which parties will sit in which groups is likely to instigate a frenzy of backroom political horse trading following the elections as the previous groupings vie for the correct mix of nationalities and numbers to ensure they can continue operating and to receive the substantial benefits that group affiliation brings.
The research currently forecasts that the parties currently affiliated to the parliament's ECR group (where UK Conservative MEPs sit) will win seats in only six member states, one country short of the minimum required to form a group.
"Several other parties might join the ECR, such as the N-VA from Belgium or the True Finns. Meanwhile, we forecast that the seven parties who are expected to join Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders in a new group will win at least 38 seats. As a result, there could be three groups to the right of the EPP with approximately 40 seats each."