The 2019 European Elections: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something green

Mark N Franklin,Luana Russo

doi:10.1017/ipo.2020.32

Abstract

In the aftermath of a European Parliament (EP) election, there are normally two prominent aspects that receive attention by scholars and experts: the turnout rate and whether the Second Order Election (SOE) model proposed by Reif and Schmitt (1980) still applies. That model is based on the idea that, because EP elections do not themselves provide enough stimulus as to replace the concerns normally present at national elections, the outcomes of EP elections in any participating country manifest themselves as a sort of distorted mirror of national (Parliamentary) elections in that country. The mirror is distorted because those national concerns are modified, not so much by the concerns arising from the European context in which EP elections are held as simply by the fact that EP elections are not national elections. In particular, at EP elections, national executive power is not at stake. The same party or parties will rule in each country after an EP election as ruled there before.

Highlights

In the aftermath of a European Parliament (EP) election, there are normally two prominent aspects that receive attention by scholars and experts: the turnout rate and whether the Second Order Election (SOE) model proposed by Reif and Schmitt (1980) still applies
Other aspects of EP elections that sometimes receive attention by commentators are suggested by a so-called Structural Model proposed by Franklin (2011)
This model builds on the SOE model by suggesting that certain features of that model vary in their impact depending on three specific features of the EP election in each country: (a) whether it is the first EP election ever held in that country or not – such elections see higher turnout; (b) what proportion of that country’s electoral cycle has elapsed at the time of the EP election concerned – EP elections occurring late in the cycle see higher turnout; and (c) whether compulsory voting is enforced in that country – again leading to higher turnout

Summary

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The 2019 European Elections: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something green. Other aspects of EP elections that sometimes receive attention by commentators are suggested by a so-called Structural Model proposed by Franklin (2011) This model builds on the SOE model by suggesting that certain features of that model vary in their impact depending on three specific features of the EP election in each country: (a) whether it is the first EP election ever held in that country or not – such elections see higher turnout; (b) what proportion of that country’s electoral cycle (the expected gap between Parliamentary elections in that country) has elapsed at the time of the EP election concerned – EP elections occurring late in the cycle see higher turnout; and (c) whether compulsory voting is enforced in that country – again leading to higher turnout. Seen in that way, the structural model was able to correctly explain some 77% of the variance in EP election turnout over the course of all EP elections to date (De Sio et al, 2019) This very high explanatory power (corresponding to a correlation between predicted and actual turnout of close to 0.9) was based on a very parsimonious model involving only

Overall EP turnout

Findings

No parties No parties