European Parliament Elections Research Articles

National parliaments and the European Union: capturing the distributive consequences of democratic intergovernmentalism

ABSTRACT European Parliament elections are frequently held to be insufficient for conferring democratic legitimacy on the EU’s policy process. This has led a growing number of actors to suggest that deriving legitimacy from national parliaments offers a suitable remedy for the EU’s democratic deficit, following the principles of ‘democratic intergovernmentalism’. Yet little attention has been paid to the effect such reforms might have on representation in practice. This article presents a novel way of visualising the problem by recalibrating the balance of power in the European Parliament between 2009 and 2024 to reflect the composition of national parliaments and the results of national elections. It finds that actors within the Greens/EFA group would be particularly vulnerable to a loss of influence. This raises important questions about the potential representative costs associated with democratic intergovernmentalist approaches.

Third-order election. Spanish political parties’ communication on Facebook during the 2019 European Parliament election campaign

The 2019 European Parliament elections were held in Spain in a context of political fragmentation and polarisation, following the recent incorporation of the extreme right into the national parliament. Elections to the European Parliament are considered second-order elections and are sometimes used by citizens to cast a punishment vote, favouring new political actors of a contestatary character to gain visibility. Social media networks such as Facebook play an important role because they offer these parties a space where they can disseminate their messages on equal terms, beyond media control. This study conducts a content analysis of the posts published on Facebook by Spanish national political parties in the month prior to the 2019 local, regional and European elections. The main goal is to analyse the communication strategy used by Spanish political parties in this social media, in order to find out the importance given by the parties to the European elections and whether there are differences in strategy at each level. The results reveal that the European elections are a third-order election for Spanish parties, behind local elections. Most parties practice a dual campaign, in which the topics, goals and emotions posted on Facebook vary according to the political level at which they are targeted. This tendency is more pronounced in populist parties and seems to be shaped by the national political context and aimed at matching the concerns of Spaniards at the European level. Despite the incorporation of the extreme right into the Spanish political chessboard, the negative Eurosceptic discourse is only present in the two populist parties and does not affect the rest of the political forces.

Conservatism and ‘Eurorealism’ in the European Parliament: the European Conservatives and Reformists under the leadership of Poland’s Law and Justice

ABSTRACT After the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party grouping experienced a major change in its representation and leadership, with the wholescale departure of its core British Conservative MEPs. Yet the ECR remained an important and coherent transnational party federation in Strasbourg, acting as a strong voice for conservatism in Europe as distinct from Christian Democracy and the radical right. With large numbers of MEPs from Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party within the grouping, there was also much continuity with policies that were opposed to ‘ever closer union’, in favour of business and the single market and also of the wider role of the USA and NATO in international relations. Often written off as merely a ‘Eurosceptic’ faction, the start of the 2019–2024 EP session saw the grouping consolidate its influence and profile in EU affairs as a distinctive right-of-centre party in the Hemicycle.

2019 European Parliament Election in Poland: who benefitted from the record increase in turnout?

Abstract One of the main factors that determines voter turnout is the mobilisation of the constituency of a given party compared with that of its opponents. The turnout in the 2019 European Parliament election in Poland was twice what it had been in previous years, and the result was forecast accordingly. The media initially reported that the victorious PiS had benefitted from new votes. The present article shows that drilling down to the lowest level of administrative unit (viz. the gmina) actually reveals a negative correlation between higher frequency and increased support for PiS in many cases. This implies that PiS did not win solely as a result of new voters being mobilised, but also, and perhaps predominantly, because KE voters switched their allegiance to PiS. Many new voters actually voted for the opposition.

The European NUTS-level election dataset: A tool to map European electoral geography.

Datasets on subnational election results in Europe frequently do not match with regional statistics available for cross-national research, mainly because territorial statistical units change over time and do not map onto the national electoral districts. This hinders consistent comparative research across time. This research note introduces EU-NED, a new dataset on subnational election data that covers national and European parliamentary elections for European countries over the past 30years. EU-NED's major contribution is that it provides election results on disaggregated levels of the statistical territorial units used by Eurostat with an unprecedented consistency and temporospatial scope. Moreover, EU-NED is integrated with the Party Facts platform, allowing for a seamless integration of party-level data. Using EU-NED, we present first descriptive evidence on the European electoral geography and suggest avenues of how EU-NED can facilitate future comparative political science research in Europe.

Party contestation and news visibility abroad: The 2019 European Parliament election from a pan-European perspective

We ask whether and why European political parties receive election news coverage abroad and investigate this phenomenon by combining theoretical stipulations regarding the politicisation of European integration and the horizontal Europeanisation of national public spheres. Based on a content analysis of 64 newspapers in 16 European Union countries following the 2019 European Parliament election, we argue that contestation over European integration increases the likelihood that foreign journalists report election results from a particular member state. Eurosceptic parties are more often visible abroad than Europhile parties, unless they stood for election in a highly polarised party system. Our results have important implications for the European Union's legitimacy as contestation over European integration increases the chances for citizens to learn about election results in other European countries.

A Post-Truth Campaign?

This article analyzes the Alternative for Germany’s campaign for the 2019 European Parliament elections against the backdrop of the phenomenon of “post-truth politics.” Post-truth politics is operationalized here as the strategic deployment of misleading frames and argumentative as well as evaluative styles. This has become a standard tool in the repertoire of populist actors, and in German politics, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a case in point. Despite the party’s thematic shift from issues of European integration to migration and multiculturalism, the European Union (EU) still represents an important point of reference in the party’s rhetoric. Empirically, this article addresses the importance of post-truth politics in the AfD’s campaign by examining the frames and evaluative styles employed by the party and its leading candidates in evoking negative images of the eu, considering in particular social and other digital media as important venues for such processes.

Yogurts Choose Consumers? Estimation of Random-Utility Models via Two-Sided Matching

Abstract The problem of demand inversion—a crucial step in the estimation of random utility discrete-choice models—is equivalent to the determination of stable outcomes in two-sided matching models. This equivalence applies to random utility models that are not necessarily additive, smooth, nor even invertible. Based on this equivalence, algorithms for the determination of stable matchings provide effective computational methods for estimating these models. For non-invertible models, the identified set of utility vectors is a lattice, and the matching algorithms recover sharp upper and lower bounds on the utilities. Our matching approach facilitates estimation of models that were previously difficult to estimate, such as the pure characteristics model. An empirical application to voting data from the 1999 European Parliament elections illustrates the good performance of our matching-based demand inversion algorithms in practice.

The Polyphonic Sounds of Europe: Users’ Engagement With Parties’ European-Focused Facebook Posts

It is an old concern in public and academic debates that people are not interested in European-level issues, and even European Parliamentary election campaigns, which are the main democratic tools of the European Union (EU) to involve ordinary people into political decision-making, are mostly about national-level political topics. Moreover, even when European issues emerge, the context of its discussion is often harmful to European integration and strengthens the perceived importance of domestic politics. In the age of social media, however, users’ content preferences may significantly affect the presence of different political levels in political campaigns, but these preferences are still largely uncovered in academic literature. To fill this gap, we investigate the direct and moderated effects of European-focused Facebook posts on user engagement drawing upon a content analysis dataset including 9,688 posts of 68 parties from 12 EU countries. In line with the well-known second-order election hypothesis (Reif & Schmitt, 1980) we hypothesize a negative direct main effect. However, we also assume that this effect is moderated by several content-, and party-level factors, and when people engage with European-level contents they do it with those ones that are posted by populist parties, focused on a few divisive hot topics, and are framed with a negative tone. Moreover, we expect cross-country differences. We find that on the whole, user engagement with national-level political content prevails over the European-level, but in some countries there are no remarkable differences in user engagement patterns of the two levels. While our findings mostly confirm the second-order election hypothesis, they also demonstrate that European politics can spread within social media platforms in a less divisive and negative way than we expected. European-focused posts do not perform better when they are posted by populist parties, focused selectively on the salient issues of immigration or environment, or framed in a negative way.

Far-right domino: Towards an integrated framework of political contagion

Predominant theories explain the electoral success of far right (FR) parties since the late 1990s within national boundaries. We offer an alternative approach to prevailing cross-national comparisons, by examining patterns of transnational diffusion through a novel integrated analytical framework of transmission of FR electoral habits and party strategies in Europe. Using a new regional database of national and European parliament elections, spanning 7,652 electoral outcomes from 2000 to 2017, we find evidence of spillovers of both FR vote and party positions. Contagion takes place between geographically and culturally proximate countries. Positive transmission is carried through foreign contextual factors in the short run and voting externalities in the long run. Impulse responses indicate that the transmission peaks 4–5 years after an unanticipated shock in foreign FR vote shares or policy positions. Our findings have policy implications for countering xenophobia, right-wing radicalism, and extremism: spillovers entail strong voting externalities which render national policies ineffective, highlighting the need for European-level policies, which can internalize these externalities.

Avrupa Yanlısı Siyasi Partiler Tarafından Avrupa Kimliği İnşası

The political scene of the European Union (EU) presents a discursive field where identity construction becomes a vital tool for political parties to claim political credit and legitimize themselves. While pro-European parties utilize the narratives of an in-group of European identity, Eurosceptic parties problematize the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ by employing narratives of intergroup differentiation as an instrument to re/shape the political reality. The scholarly literature mostly focuses on Eurosceptic populist discourse and right-wing rhetoric relying on discursive socio-political exclusion to form in-group identification of national identities. By adopting a different stance, this article seeks to address the discursive strategies of the pro-European parties employed and mobilized during the 2019 European Parliament election campaigns through the discourse historical approach. It argues that it is of critical importance to reveal the pro-European discourse to reflect the pro-European stance over the debates on the existing identity cleavage within the turbulent European political scene.

Polityka jako gra strategiczna – ramowanie polskich wyborów 2019 w telewizyjnych programach informacyjnych

The research on the information media coverage of elections deals with a concept of strategic game framing. Despite the major importance of the media in elections, there are few systematic research on the media framing in Poland. Using a content analysis of two television news programmes, the goal of the study was to evaluate the frequency of strategic game framing in comparison with issue framing and to test the hypothesis about the relationship between application of the frames and different ownership types in the media (public vs private). The findings show a key role of strategic game framing in the news programmes covering European Parliamentary elections and Parliamentary elections of 2019 in Poland and refute the hypothesis that ownership type of media predicts the frequency of analysed frames.

Digital Civic Engagement in the EU: Analysing Examples, Tools, and Sentiment in Latvia and Estonia

The decline of civic engagement has been an issue for several EU Member States. To promote civic engagement, digital tools have been perceived as one of the possible solutions both at the EU and national levels. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that has intensifi ed digitalisation in many forms and sectors, the issue of digital solutions for civic engagement has regained its relevance and topicality. In the last decade, Latvia has been among other EU Member States in which civic engagement has become a concerning and long-term challenge. For instance, as opposed to Estonia, voter turnout in the most recent national and European parliamentary elections has gradually declined in Latvia. There are also limited digital possibilities through which Latvian society can participate and influence the political agenda daily. Therefore, this article provides an overview of the provisions and guidelines at the EU level to address the issue of civic engagement by promoting digital democracy tools. Secondly, it analyses what digital tools exist in Latvia to promote civic engagement. Thirdly, by comparing the digital civic engagement solutions implemented in Estonia and Latvia, the lessons learned are drawn. Finally, using data from quantitative (polls) studies (before and during the COVID-19 pandemic), the article provides recommendations for Latvia in the context of I-voting.

Learning about the unknown Spitzenkandidaten: The role of media exposure during the 2019 European Parliament elections

The Spitzenkandidaten were meant to personalize European Parliament elections. This paper asks whether and through which channels the lead candidates were actually able to make themselves known among voters – a necessary precondition for any electoral effect. Combining panel surveys and online tracking data, the study explores candidate learning during the German 2019 European Parliament election campaign and relates learning to different types of news exposure, with a special focus on online news. The results show that learning was limited and unevenly distributed across candidates. However exposure to candidate-specific online news and most types of offline news helped to acquire knowledge. The findings imply that Spitzenkandidaten stick to voters’ minds when they get exposed to them, but that exposure is infrequent in high-choice media environments.

When nationalism meets populism: examining right-wing populist & nationalist discourses in the 2014 & 2019 European parliamentary elections

ABSTRACT This article provides an empirical contribution into the discursive repertoire of seven populist radical right-wing parties. Within the context of the European Parliamentary elections of 2014 and 2019, we examine and compare how these parties discursively shape the content of social demands by assessing how ‘the people’, ‘the nation’, ‘the elite’ and ‘others’ are constructed, and how different demands are incorporated. In doing so we assess the specific role of populism and nationalism in these parties’ discourse. We apply a two-stage measurement technique, combining both qualitative and quantitative content analytical modes of research, with advantages over existing methods, looking at both levels and form of the populist and nationalist signifiers. Our results suggest that although parties often combine both populism and nationalism, there is a general disposition to construct the signifer ‘the people’, not primarily through staging an antagonism between ‘people/elite’ (populism), but rather through articulating ‘the people’ as a national community in need of protection from the EU (nationalism). In view of this, we highlight that populism does not operate as the differentia specifica of populist radical right wing parties’ discourse.

Fostering the Political Participation of EU Non-national Citizens: The Case of Brussels

Political participation is considered an essential feature of democracy. The European Union (EU) aimed to foster political participation with the introduction of European citizenship, which gives the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal and European Parliament elections in whichever EU country the citizen resides. However, from the few figures available, registration and turnout rates among mobile EU citizens seem very low. In this article, we investigate the effectiveness of a proactive campaign in order to promote the participation of European non-national residents in municipal elections by focusing on a specific initiative: the VoteBrussels Campaign. Focusing on Brussels, and in the general on the Belgian case, offers us the opportunity to carry out a quasi-experimental design. Our findings suggest that a mobilisation campaign has a positive regionwide effect on the participation of mobile EU citizens.

Who won the election? Explaining news coverage of election results in multi‐party systems

AbstractWhen reporting on election results, the media declare parties as election ‘winners’ or ‘losers’, which has important consequences for voter perceptions and government formation. This article investigates news coverage of parties’ electoral performance in proportional representation systems, in which election results are often less clear‐cut compared to majoritarian systems. It tests the extent to which news coverage of parties’ electoral performance is based on objective measures or on party ideology. Its focus on the aftermath of the 2019 European Parliament election allows holding the electoral context constant across the 16 countries under study. Results from a Heckman selection model show that alongside a party's status as plurality winner and changes in electoral support, parties with radical socio‐cultural policy positions are both more likely to be covered and declared election winners in the news. These results have important implications for citizens’ attitudes and perceived party legitimacy in democratic societies.

A polygenic score for educational attainment partially predicts voter turnout

Twin and adoption studies have shown that individual differences in political participation can be explained, in part, by genetic variation. However, these research designs cannot identify which genes are related to voting or the pathways through which they exert influence, and their conclusions rely on possibly restrictive assumptions. In this study, we use three different US samples and a Swedish sample to test whether genes that have been identified as associated with educational attainment, one of the strongest correlates of political participation, predict self-reported and validated voter turnout. We find that a polygenic score capturing individuals' genetic propensity to acquire education is significantly related to turnout. The strongest associations we observe are in second-order midterm elections in the United States and European Parliament elections in Sweden, which tend to be viewed as less important by voters, parties, and the media and thus present a more information-poor electoral environment for citizens to navigate. A within-family analysis suggests that individuals' education-linked genes directly affect their voting behavior, but, for second-order elections, it also reveals evidence of genetic nurture. Finally, a mediation analysis suggests that educational attainment and cognitive ability combine to account for between 41% and 63% of the relationship between the genetic propensity to acquire education and voter turnout.

Introducing COMEPELDA: Comprehensive European Parliament electoral data covering rules, parties and candidates

We introduce a new collection of data that consolidates information on European Parliament elections into one comprehensive source. It provides information on formal electoral rules as well as national-level and district-level election results for parties and individual politicians (including full candidate lists). The use of existing and new key variables makes it easy to link the data across the different units of observation (country, party, candidate, member of parliament) and join them with external information. Currently, the data cover four elections (1999–2014). Among other aspects, the collection should facilitate research on the European Parliament's allegedly weak electoral connection. In this article, we outline the main features of the datasets, describe patterns of intra-party competition and preference voting and conduct exploratory analyses of individual-level changes in list positions.

Negativity about Europe: Does it propel parties’ media visibility?

AbstractIn recent decades, the prevalence of negative communication has intensified across the world. In this article, we seek to understand the mechanisms that spread negativity about a unified Europe. We study the specific conditions under which negative party communication boosts media visibility, focusing on the role of country-specific party conflicts on European Union (EU) integration. Our analysis is based on content analysis data of parties’ press releases and media coverage in the 12 weeks preceding the 2014 European Parliamentary elections in seven countries (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom). We find that EU-negative party communication by and large does not matter for party visibility in the media, though the results provide scant evidence that cross-national differences relate to a country’s party conflict.