EP Elections Research Articles

Changing generational tides: the transformation of electoral participation in European Parliament elections

Electoral turnout has been declining in nearly all Western democracies. While scholars have identified the ‘negative’ effects of generational replacement and forecasted how turnout will continue to decline, the turnout in the 2019 European Parliament election surged to its highest participatory level in the last two decades, driven surprisingly by increased youth participation. This age-period-cohort study investigates whether and to what extent younger generations socialised in changing electoral contexts turn out at different levels than their generational counterparts. Analysing survey data from the EES and the CSES across 28 European countries over decades reveals a reversing generational participatory pattern in EP elections and a narrowing turnout gap between national and European Parliament elections across younger generations, despite differences in Western and Eastern Europe. These results have important implications for the effect of generation on turnout and future trends of electoral participation.

Conceptualising politicisation as activity: the politics of the 2019 EP elections

ABSTRACT The article makes an innovative contribution to concept formation in the study of politicisation. It proposes a novel approach to analysing politicisation and applies it to the EU: It develops a theoretical and conceptual framework that regards politics as an activity and politicisation as the action that marks an issue as political. It is argued that such an approach can grasp facets of politicisation that most other existing approaches do not manage to tackle, since they rely on a system-based concept of politics, which leads to blind spots in their analytical outreach. Based on a discussion of classical and contemporary literature on politics and politicisation, a taxonomy of four scenarios of EU politicisation and its impact on EU citizen involvement and EU integration is then developed. The final part of the article illustrates these scenarios with Eurobarometer data that highlight that the 2019 EP elections were marked by complex and partially opposing dynamics of politicisation: voter preferences and outcomes indicate an increased impact of EU-related claims alongside growing generalised polity contestation. Power constellations in the EP have changed, but the 2019 EP elections also had a clear impact on the formation of political leadership in the EU.

Candidate turnover in EP- versus national elections: a new perspective on the second-order logic? A comparative analysis

ABSTRACT This article investigates the differences between candidate turnover at national legislative and European Parliament elections. Multilevel analysis is applied on original data containing 2754 electoral lists, clustered within 79 political parties, within 48 national and European elections. These comparative data allow (1) to test hypotheses on second-order EU elections within the context of electoral recruitment and (2) to measure the effect of systemic turnover drivers, which in turn may differ for EP elections. As such, this paper builds further on the emerging literature on candidate renewal by offering a comparative perspective and understanding the particular dynamic for EP elections. Results suggest that candidate turnover is lower at EP elections. Moreover, the effects of turnover drivers differ at EP elections: candidate turnover is lower on lists of fringe parties at the European level and elections with higher electoral volatility are characterised by higher candidate turnover, particularly at European elections.

Assessing survey mode effects in the 2019 EP elections: A comparison of online and face-to-face-survey data from six European countries

The quality of online survey data is sometimes seen as inferior compared to probabilistic face-to-face surveys. Extending existing research beyond the commonly studied cases, we analyse six European countries, comparing data from a representative online survey fielded for the 2019 EP elections to the European Social Survey 9 and EB 91.5. We assess the effects of survey mode in terms of representativeness compared to validated benchmarks, as well as with inferences about party identification and vote choice. While we do find some differences in the marginal distributions compared to sociodemographic and electoral benchmarks, the inferential models when using online survey data as compared to face-to-face surveys are not substantially different.

First Order for some. How Different Forms of Politicization Motivated Voters in the 2019 European Parliamentary Election

AbstractDifferent theories of politicization in EP elections entail very different conclusions for EU legitimacy. The somber predictions of second‐order election (SOE) theory have been challenged by theories of polity politicization in recent years, but many scholars still believe policy politicization to be most desirable from a normative point of view. Despite its importance, there are few studies investigating the meaning citizens attach to their voting decision, which is crucial for disentangling different forms of politicization. We address this gap by choosing a qualitative and explorative research design, conducting 107 semi‐structured interviews in France, Germany and Poland on the day of the 2019 EP elections. Our analysis of voter motivations provides evidence of SOE behavior, but also of European‐level polity and policy politicization. The fact that voters are motivated by different forms of politicization challenges the hegemony of SOE theory. For some voters, EP elections are first order. This is good news for EP legitimacy.

Anti‐elitism in the European Radical Right in Comparative Perspective

To better understand the communication of anti‐elitism in contemporary politics, this study conceptually differentiates between specific anti‐elitism geared toward specific, materially powerful elites (‘Angela Merkel’) and general anti‐elitism referencing broader discursive constructs (‘the elite’). The study analyses the online communications of radical right parties in the 2019 European Parliament elections from six countries (Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Poland and Sweden). This more fine‐grained analysis of anti‐elitism highlights some areas of transnational convergence, such as a tendency to focus on specific political elites, rather than other sectors such as the media or discursive constructs. The findings also reveal stratification according to parties' position in national power structures: opposition parties tend to target national‐level elites while governing parties focus on the European level. The findings highlight that anti‐elitism is used in a highly instrumental way, and help us to better understand the intersection between anti‐elitism and the multilevel politics of EP elections.

Misinformedness about the European Union and the Preference to Vote to Leave or Remain.

European politicians have become increasingly concerned about the possible distorting effects of citizens not only being uninformed, but systematically misinformed about the European Union (EU). Against this background, this study assesses the role of EU knowledge in shaping the preference to vote to leave or remain in a (hypothetical) referendum on EU membership using cross‐national survey data that were collected simultaneously in eight EU countries during the run‐up to the 2019 EP elections. The surveys included a newly designed item battery of EU knowledge capturing both the accuracy as well as confidence in knowledge of the respondents. The results show that misinformedness is associated with a preference to leave the EU, the uninformed citizens tend to be undecided or not intending to vote, while the well‐informed prefer to remain. Overall, our findings contribute to the ongoing debates about the role of misinformation in politics.

Polish, and Slovak, Women in the European Parliament: an Analysis of the Results of the Election Held in May 2019

Abstract The objective of our paper is to analyse the political activity of Polish, and Slovak, women in EP elections; we aim to determine, among other things: whether gender quotas are a decisive factor for women’s electoral success, or do other factors result in an increase/decrease in the number of female candidates and the number of women MEPs? What are the particular characteristics of women representing Poland, and Slovakia, in the EP? What was their path to the EP? Which (conservative, liberal) parties are more willing to put women forward in EP elections? Poland introduced the so-called gender quotas into the electoral system, while Slovakia does not have such legal solutions in place. However, when comparing Slovakia to the situation in Poland, it can be stated that although there is a system of election quotas in Poland, its practical implementation may be purely theoretical. In percentage terms, the number of Slovak women elected to the European Parliament (except 2019) was significantly higher than in Poland, even though there is no quota system in the Slovak Republic. The success of Polish, and Slovak, women in the elections to the EP of the 9th term is the result of many factors, which include so-called electoral engineering (quotas, gender balance, first and second places on lists), electoral strategy of a party, but above all, political and social activity of the women themselves. We consider the last factor to be determinant in this respect.

What characterize the elections to the European Parliament? Electoral strategy study for the EP elections between 2004 and 2019: type of candidates and campaign topics

El presente artículo presenta un estudio cuantitativo cuyo principal objetivo es determinar las características de una campaña electoral al Parlamento Europeo, específicamente aquellas vinculadas al emisor de los mensajes políticos: tipología de candidatos y temas de campaña. Consideradas como elecciones de segundo orden, la literatura las ha caracterizado de manera particular respecto a elecciones nacionales y regionales y el presente artículo servirá como evidencia empírica de cuáles son las características que se le pueden atribuir a la estrategia política y de comunicación electoral de los comicios al Parlamento Europeo. Con dicho objetivo en mente, se han analizado las características de los actos de campaña (edad, ámbito y sexo de los protagonistas, temáticas tratadas en dichos actos, etc.) de los partidos políticos de España y Francia que, en algún momento entre 2004 y 2019, han obtenido representación en el Parlamento Europeo. Entre las principales conclusiones encontraremos que la agenda mediática europea queda en un segundo plano, que la media de edad de los cabezas de lista supera casi siempre los 50 años y que, aunque aún la brecha es amplia, entre 2004 y 2019 la presencia de mujeres como cabezas de cartel se ha incrementado.

A jelenlét nélküli jelen(lét) – a hazai pártszervezetek fejlettségének területi különbségei

Numerous studies draw a direct link between party institutionalization and democratic (re) consolidation. The level of organization of a given political movement can easily determine their subsequent electoral performance. Not just in Hungary, but within the wider Central-Eastern-European region, accessing data on party membership, branch offices, etc., is extremely challenging, therefore concluding or discovering party organizational strength is a critical research area. In this study I am making a bold attempt to unveil the social embeddedness of the most important political parties from the 2014 general elections to the latest EP elections (2019), by using the polling station table-seater delegates` presence as an indicator of local party presence itself. I assume that, if a given party is not able to delegate a single person to a certain polling station, they have no operating organizations at the grassroots level, therefore it indicates their lack of localization and extensive network. With simple quantitative methodologies, I was also seeking the relationship between electoral performance and party organizational presence locally.

Party competition over EU integration: asymmetrical impacts of external shocks across regions?

AbstractUsing Voting Advice Application (VAA) data from the EU Profiler/euandi Trend File, we studied how parties’ positions towards European integration relate to their positions on other important issues, and how this varies across EP elections, and between European regions. We hypothesized that the association between parties’ EU-integration positions and their positions on other issues was affected by the three major crises that hit the European Union (EU) between 2009 and 2019: the economic, migration, and climate crises. Additionally, we hypothesized that the economic and migration crises asymmetrically affected the association between cultural and economic issues on the one hand and the EU dimension on the other across the EU’s three macro regions (NWE, SE, and CEE). Our results show that neither the economic crisis nor the migration crisis or the climate crisis had an EU-wide impact on how European integration relates to other issue dimensions. As we hypothesized, economic issues were particularly strongly linked to EU-integration positions in SE in 2014, but our results additionally indicated that the longstanding interpretation of EU integration as a mainly economic issue in SE diminished after the start of the migration crisis. Finally, EU integration became related to immigration issues in CEE while this is not the case in the other regions. The main takeaway is that EU integration is interpreted differently by parties across the EU, which is important to recognize for parties that seek to work together in transnational party groups, and for scholars that aim to understand EU policy making.

A responsive relationship? setting the political agenda in the European Union

ABSTRACT Recent research has documented the European Commission's attention to the preferences of the European public and the other EU institutions when formulating policy proposals. This project demonstrates that such efforts originated with the first Barroso Commission, which addressed public concerns through purposeful coordination with the European Parliament when drafting policy priorities in the Commission’s administrative units. We test for public input during the inter-institutional coordination as early as 2004–2008, using Europarties’ pledges issued during the 2004 EP elections and subsequent Commission policy priorities. Our analyses show that the policy priorities of the Commission overlap with the Europarties’ pledges when 1) the public is critical of European integration, 2) policies are salient to the public, and 3) priority initiatives fall in areas dominated by civil society and NGO groups. We interpret our results as a responsive relationship based on the inter-institutional coordination between the two actors at the agenda-setting stage.

Spatial links in the analysis of voter turnout in European Parliamentary elections

This paper investigates the turnout in European Parliamentary elections by analyzing the four EP elections from 1999 to 2014 in 155 regions in EU-12. We use a number of econometric techniques that account for spatial dependence, also dealing with heteroskedasticity and endogeneity. The results confirm the role of spatial spillovers and indicate a significant role for GDP per capita, unemployment, age, institutional and electoral variables in influencing turnout. Finally, we disentangle the direct and indirect effects of the regional variable in affecting turnout.

Technocratic attitudes and voting behaviour ten years after the Eurozone crisis: Evidence from the 2019 EP elections

The onset of the Great Recession raised the profile of technocracy, or government by experts, as a contrasting model to democracy. Yet, there is little research on how attitudes towards technocracy may impact European citizens' political behaviour. Moreover, the consistency of technocracy supporters' political attitudes, especially towards the EU, is questionable. This paper uses new survey panel data collected before and after the European parliament elections in May 2019 in six countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain). We investigate how citizens’ technocratic attitudes affect their voting behaviour in the European elections. We find evidence that citizens with technocratic attitudes are less likely to support mainstream parties, and tend to either abstain or, if they vote, to give their vote to anti-system parties, especially from the populist right. In addition, by distinguishing technocracy supporters according to their partisanship, we conclude that technocracy is a thin ideology that can be combined with different patterns of political support: while many technocracy supporters have no party identification or support non-mainstream parties and show dissatisfaction with democracy and the EU, another subgroup of technocracy supporters identifies with a mainstream political party and show above average political support and support for the EU.

A fistful of followers: the resilience of the second-order campaign model?

ABSTRACT EP elections are widely regarded as the archetypal second-order national election. Although parties’ strategic moves are frequently mediated by traditional media, parties are increasingly using alternative communication strategies, as social media, to communicate directly to their electorate. Social media can be particularly relevant in ‘bridging the gap’ with voters in second-order elections. After 2014, EP elections took place in a context where policy had been, to a non-negligible extent, perceived to have been shaped at the European level. The extent to which Eurozone crisis ‘disrupted’ the second-order model requires further examination. Through the analysis of the activities of political parties in social media, this study seeks to assess the extent to which the Eurozone crisis triggered more intense campaigns while assessing the partisan variables that explain variation in parties’ levels of activities. Overall, social media activity tends to suggest the resilience of the second-order model. This article highlights that the economic downturn has very much forced European issues into the political agendas, unveiling important signs of a disruption of the second-order model. Also, the politicisation of Europe in the first elections after the Eurozone crises (2019) was characterised by higher levels of activities of parties that openly contested the EU.

Indifferent and Eurosceptic: The motivations of EU-only abstainers in the 2019 European Parliament election

Despite the dramatic voter turnout increase in 2019, the participation level in European Parliament elections is still considerably lower than in national elections. How can we explain this persistent ‘Euro gap’? This article analyses the motivations of citizens who participate in national but not in European electoral contests, the so-called ‘EU-only abstainers’. The empirical analysis based on the EES 2019 voter study reveals that EU-only abstention is driven by low levels of general political interest and EU-specific political sophistication, as well as by distrust towards EU institutions. Therefore, the Euro gap results from the widespread perception that there is ‘less at stake’ during EP elections, but it is also an aggregate-level consequence of individual Eurosceptic attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of present-day European elections and the debate between the two most common theoretical approaches in EP election research.

Discursive (re)construction of populist sovereignism by right-wing hard Eurosceptic parties in the 2019 European parliament elections

Abstract The overarching aim of the article is to investigate the discourse of populist sovereignism as articulated by the leaders and/or leading candidates of four right-wing hard Eurosceptic populist parties in the following countries during the 2019 elections to the European Parliament: the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. The political parties investigated are Freedom and Direct Democracy, League, People’s Party Our Slovakia and Brexit Party. Using the analytical tools of Critical Discourse Analysis and drawing on the concept of populist sovereignism, the study investigates how right-wing Eurosceptic populist sovereignism was discursively (re)constructed by right-wing hard Eurosceptic parties during the 2019 EP elections across the four cases. As such, the inquiry brings fresh insights as it looks at right-wing populist discourse through the sovereignism perspective, thus complementing the literature on populist mobilization that focuses on grasping the linkage between populism and sovereignism.

SPD a tematizace migrace v období před volbami do Evropského parlamentu 2019: případová studie facebookových příspěvků a výstupů v TV předvolebních debatách

SPD a tematizace migrace v období před volbami do Evropského parlamentu 2019: případová studie facebookových příspěvků a výstupů v TV předvolebních debatách

‘Europe’ of populist radical right and the case of Lega of Salvini: pioneer of a ‘Parochial Europe’?

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the ‘Europe’ of populist radical right parties in general, and the Lega of Matteo Salvini and its perception of Europe in particular. Especially after Brexit, Salvini has emphasized the goal of transforming Europe and taking back Italian sovereignty rather than leaving the EU. His discourse on ‘Europe for Europeans’ and ‘Italy for Italians’ represents an exclusive and nativist approach. Before the 2019 elections of the European Parliament, the contestation between many Europes came to the fore while the Lega has become a pioneer for populist radical right parties during the campaign period on behalf of a ‘parochial Europe’. This article firstly explains the methodology, conceptual analysis, and analytical framework based on European multiplicity – as thin, thick, parochial, and global Europe. Secondly, it evaluates the ‘Others’ of parochial Europe, particularly for Lega. Thirdly, it analyses the case of the Lega as the pioneer of parochial Europe before the May 2019 EP elections based on semi-structured, face-to-face, in-depth expert interviews conducted by the author.

Mapping Parties’ Positions on Foreign and Security Issues in the EU, 2009–2014

Abstract This article offers a comparative analysis of parties’ position on foreign and security issues in the EU28 across the EP elections of 2009 and 2014. First, we map the position of the parties on selected foreign policy and security issues in both 2009 and 2014. Second, we measure the extent to which party positions on such issues remained stable across these five years. Third, we offer an explanatory analysis of the competing factors potentially affecting changes in parties’ position. By means of multivariate regression models, we test the effect of party ideology, overall attitude toward EU integration, and structural factors at the party level in view of answering the following question: Do parties hold “genuine” positions over EU foreign and security policy, or are they rather due to their relatively more encompassing attitude toward EU integration? The data come from two transnational voting advice applications developed during the 2009 and 2014 European elections campaigns, respectively.