Conflict and Identity: Explaining Turnout and Anti‐integrationist Voting in the Danish 2004 Elections for the European Parliament

Abstract

This article investigates electoral participation and the antecedents of anti‐integrationist voting (AIV) in the Danish 2004 European parliamentary elections. First, it focuses on the effects of the campaign and assesses the importance of social demographics and political predispositions vis‐à‐vis mediated and interpersonal communication on turnout. Second, it investigates AIV, focusing on ‘hard’ utilitarian predictors and ‘soft’ cultural predictors. It draws on the European Election Study (EES) post‐electoral voter survey and a media content analysis of the most important news media outlets. Its findings corroborate previous research on political participation and shows significant positive effects of interpersonal political discussion and exposure to news media that portrayed the European elections as a conflict‐laden contest on turnout. The analysis of AIV highlights the importance of proxies (lack of trust and dissatisfaction with the incumbent government) and political ideology, but also feelings of identity. The latter provides evidence from the Danish context in support of an emerging body of literature emphasizing ‘soft’ explanations of euroscepticism.