Second-order Elections Research Articles

The 2024 European parliament elections in Ireland

ABSTRACT On the eve of the 2024 European elections in Ireland, predictions suggested a potential seismic shift in the political landscape. Sinn Féin, the leading opposition party, was expected to make significant gains at the expense of the coalition government. However, when the dust settled, it became clear that a Sinn Féin surge did not materialise; Ireland maintained its political centre. Fine Gael held firm, losing only one seat, while Fianna Fáil doubled its seat count. The Green Party suffered the most, losing both its seats. Opposition parties fared worse than expected with Sinn Féin managing to gain only one additional seat, and Labour securing its first win since 2009. Independent candidates performed well overall, maintaining their seat count, but with their composition altered. This report offers a detailed review of the election, highlighting key issues and results, and examining the electoral context, main candidates, campaign trail, and opinion polls. Domestic issues dominated the discussions, with European matters barely mentioned. Immigration, housing, and agriculture took precedence, while climate change, and the wars in Ukraine and Middle East were largely overlooked. This reinforces the argument that European elections often resemble as second-order elections, albeit with some differences.

When Elections Wait: A Cross-National Analysis of Election Postponement During the COVID-19 Pandemic

During the first 2 years of the coronavirus pandemic, over 150 countries had scheduled elections, but approximately half of them had to be postponed due to the pandemic. Why were some elections postponed while others were not? Despite its impact on the election calendar and democratic accountability, election postponement has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. In this study, I investigate the conditions under which elections are more likely to be delayed. Utilizing a comprehensive cross-national dataset encompassing election schedules worldwide, COVID-19-related factors, and other societal and institutional characteristics, I provide the first systematic examination of election postponement during the first 2 years of the pandemic. The empirical analysis reveals that national elections are less likely to be postponed compared to second-order elections such as subnational and special elections. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the momentum of the pandemic plays a significant role, and effective pandemic management and robust healthcare infrastructures decrease the likelihood of election postponement. On the other hand, institutional constraints have little impact. By shedding light on the factors driving election postponement, this study enhances our understanding of how crises can shape democratic processes.

2019 European Elections in Cyprus: An Empirical Exploration of Second-Order Election Effects and Europe Salience

Abstract By focusing on Cyprus’ constitutional and political system in light of the most recent European elections, this article explores and empirically analyses the second-order election theory and the European salience theory. The study applies these theories to identify key trends in Cypriot voters’ electoral behavior, including their attitudes toward European integration. The contribution starts with a brief preliminary section on the country’s historical background, geopolitical profile, and political landscape. It then provides insights on Cyprus’ electoral system, the political parties’ campaigns, and election results. The findings seek to unveil voter attitudes and political trends in Cyprus, feeding public discussion and academic dialogue on the issue in anticipation of the upcoming 2024 European election. The article aims to clarify the European South’s attitudes toward voting and what to expect in the upcoming 2024 elections, considering challenges, threats, and volatility.1

Testing Europe Salience and Second-Order Election Theories: 2019 European Parliamentary Elections in Lithuania

Abstract The article assesses the 2019 elections to the European Parliament (EP) in Lithuania and their theoretical relevance. The analysis presents the political stances of parties and the electorate towards the EU. The focus then shifts to information and political campaigns, the parties participating in the EP elections, and the electoral results. These aspects serve to evaluate the theoretical relevance of Second-order election theory and the Europe salience theory, revealing the absence of Eurosceptic, protest, populist, and postmaterial mood in the 2019 EP elections in Lithuania.

Second-order Economic Voting in Elections to the European Parliament

When examining citizens’ behaviour in elections to the European Parliament (EP), second order elections (SOE) and economic voting (EV) have overlooked each other as alien traditions. However, they should not be seen as incompatible: voters may use EP elections to support national incumbents but, at the same time, this support may be the result of an economic assessment. This paper blends both frameworks and finds that, even though EP elections are not intended to evaluate domestic politics, voters use them to reward or punish national incumbents (i.e. SOE) for the state of the economy (i.e. EV); a behaviour referred to here as ‘second-order economic voting’. The predominance of second-order EV is relevant for EU politics. If EP elections enhance national incumbents’ accountability while the European executive remains unacknowledged, this could be disturbing for European economic institutions.

Does executive autonomy reduce second-order election effects?

The second-order election (SOE) model expects voters to punish parties in national government and reward opposition, small and new parties because there is ‘less at stake’ in an SOE. One key assumption that is rarely studied is whether SOE-effects depend on the extent to which voters can impact the selection of the executive in an SOE. This article argues that executive ­autonomy – i.e. the extent to which executives are independent from the parliament regarding their formation, termination and execution of their competences – increases the impact of authority. Executive autonomy reduces SOE-effects when authority is high but increases SOE-effects when authority is low. An empirical analysis of 41,603 vote share swings for 4733 parties competing in 2665 elections held in 282 regions in 14 European countries between 1945 and 2019 confirms the hypotheses. These results have important implications for electoral democracy and party competition at the regional, national and European level.

Emotions of Candidates on Twitter in the 2023 Seville City Council Election: A Second-Order Campaign?

This paper analyses the messages that candidates emitted on the social network Twitter (now called “X”) during the campaign for the 2023 municipal elections in the city of Seville and the emotions they used. This type of electoral process has usually been deemed as second-order elections within multilevel governance political systems, implying that the national arena may affect local dynamics to some degree. Thus, the main research objective is to determine the extent to which elements of nationalisation were used in candidates’ rhetoric, along with the emotional components associated with each political formation during a local campaign somewhat relevant on the state level. A total of 960 tweets were retrieved through R Statistics and the Application Programming Interface of the social network itself. They were then analysed drawing upon the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count programme. The results show that certain elements of nationalisation were indeed used by candidates, in addition to emotional-level differences present in their messages. This accentuates the evident need for further research on municipal elections and campaigns, as well as on their potential distinctive features regarding political jurisdiction.

Lokale Hauptwahl oder nationale Nebenwahl?

ZusammenfassungKommunalwahlen werden nicht zuletzt aufgrund ihrer geringen Wahlbeteiligung häufig als nationale Nebenwahlen betrachtet. Die Fokussierung der Nebenwahlperspektive auf nationale Einflussfaktoren führt jedoch zu einer Unterbewertung lokaler Heterogenität. Der Artikel untersucht, inwiefern lokale Kontextfaktoren, insbesondere Gemeindegröße, Wahl- und Parteiensysteme sowie die wahrgenommene Bedeutung der kommunalen Ebene einen Beitrag zur Erklärung von Beteiligungsunterschieden zwischen Kommunalwahlen leisten. Dazu analysieren wir die Wahlbeteiligung bei den Kommunalwahlen 2014 in neun Bundesländern. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Wahlsysteme freier Listen einen negativen Einfluss auf die Wahlbeteiligung haben. Die Erwartung, dass die kommunale Wahlbeteiligung mit steigender Gemeindegröße abnimmt, kann hingegen nur mit Einschränkung bestätigt werden. Auch kann ein Einfluss des lokalen Parteiensystems nur unter Vorbehalt nachgewiesen werden. Gemeinden mit nationalisiertem Parteiensystem genießen zwar eine höhere Wahlbeteiligung, aber der Effekt ist nur von geringem Umfang und kann lediglich auf der Aggregatdatenebene geschätzt werden. In Einklang mit der Nebenwahlthese zeigt sich schließlich, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit der individuellen Wahlteilnahme mit der wahrgenommenen Bedeutung der Kommunalwahlen steigt.

Unpacking second-order elections theory: The effects of ideological extremity on voting in European elections

The proposition that extreme parties should perform better in second-order national contests when compared to adjacent, first-order, national elections has so far received scant attention from scholars. Correspondingly, it lacks a developed theoretical framework and systematic empirical testing. This study strives to fill these lacunae, offering a comparative analysis of all European and adjacent national elections in the last six decades. Contrary to expectations, I find a negative effect of ideological extremity on party performance in (second-order) European elections. Moreover, the effect of ideological extremity is also conditional upon party size and the temporal distance of the European election to the last national election. However, these effects are at odds with theoretical expectations of existing research. These findings have broader implications, especially in terms of transformations of European politics. For instance, they can be indicative of shifts in voter motivations and the electoral costs of governing for extreme parties.

Australian state and territory elections: regional incumbents matter

ABSTRACT Recent research is ambiguous about the status of Australian regional elections, seeing them as conforming to the second-order election model but also as affected by regional politics. We clarify this ambiguity, drawing on aggregate and individual level data to explore the variable impact of national and regional incumbents on regional elections. Although national incumbents seem to affect Australian regional elections, under some circumstances regional incumbent parties are able to electorally outperform their national incumbent counterparts. We suggest that Australia’s uncoordinated national and regional election cycles and federal distribution of policy responsibilities both help to focus voter attention on the performance of regional incumbents. The way that regional incumbents manage key policy issues, including Covid-19 in recent years, appears to matter for their electoral support, making Australian regional elections more than second-order events.

Moving beyond the second-order election model?

ABSTRACT In this introduction to the sixth annual review of regional elections we identify three generations of regional election studies that have applied the second-order election (SOE) model. First-generation literature finds that regional authority, territorial cleavages, and election (non-)simultaneity explain territorial heterogeneity in SOE-effects because they affect ‘what is at stake’ in a regional election. A ‘stake-based’ approach also underlies a second-generation literature that finds that voters with strong regional identities and who find regional government important are more likely to make distinct party choices in the regional electoral arena. Third-generation research adopts a multilevel electoral system perspective and considers the impact of political-institutional variables on the extent of horizontal and vertical top-down and bottom-up spill-over between regional and national electoral arenas. Four election articles and four election reports make important contributions to the three generations of literature and thereby reveal that these generations of regional election scholarship remain highly relevant.

The Scottish Parliamentary Elections and the Transformation of Electoral Behaviour

The rise of the decentralisation or devolution reforms in Europe in the past decades brought scholars' attention to the voting behaviour in multi-level electoral systems. Some types of elections, such as local or regional, might be considered less important for voters than national ones. However, in some regions, the importance of the sub-state level of governance is rising, which might lead voters to change their perception of the regional elections. Since the beginning of the devolution in the UK, the Scottish parliament has become one of the most powerful regional parliaments in Europe. The study reviewed the main differences in electoral behaviour between general and regional elections in Scotland. The analysis used four aspects of the theoretical model of the second-order election. It focused on the turnout in both elections, the success of small and regional parties, the change of support for government and opposition parties and the main campaign topics. The results showed that the Scottish electoral behaviour went through a significant transformation at regional and state-wide level in the past two decades. The different electoral behaviour in regional elections was significantly influenced by the voting system that helped regional nationalist parties increase their support and become the main political force in the region that determines electoral competition. The transformation of electoral behaviour in the Scottish parliamentary election continued to the state-wide level. It determined that the regional elections, in the case of Scotland, cannot be perceived as less important and subordinated to the general elections.

Önkormányzati választás Szegeden, 2019

The 2019 local, municipal election outclasses the second-order elections in the given political constellation. This is especially true in the case of Szeged, where the opposition – unlike the situation at the national level – has the power for a long time. To change this situation, the governing parties, taking advantage of their dominant position – and using all means – conducted a very vigorous campaign, changing the city into a battlefield. According to the results, the governemt’s attempt was not successfull, it was rather contraproductive. The reigning mayor and city management won an unprecedented victory. The root cause of it is a special urban policy which extracted the local politics from the partyfights and overrode party interests, and which represented the interests of the city succesfully and with credibility even against cross-wind. Based on the cooperation of the entire opposition the implemented urban policy is symbolized by and embodied in the person of the mayor in office since 2002.

The second-order election model and the performance of political parties in municipal elections

Elections at the municipal level are often treated as second-order elections (SOE), subordinate to the national electoral arena in a manner similar to the European elections. The original SOE model expects incumbent national parties to perform worse, while predicting smaller and ideologically extreme parties to perform better in the second-order electoral arena compared to the first-order (national) one. Based on a dataset covering aggregate election results in three Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway and Finland) with party-dominated local governments and a time span of more than three decades, we find that the performance of parties in municipal elections only to some degree conforms to the expectations of the model. Parties in national government usually suffer losses in municipal elections, but the effect of incumbency is contingent upon the party size: only large incumbent parties are punished in local elections. We find very weak support for the hypothesis that extreme parties perform better than moderates and suggest that this can be explained by the organisational effort required to field the candidates and campaign in multiple jurisdictions. We conclude that the SOE model should not be applied as a default to municipal elections when explaining political parties’ electoral performance.

Why Political Scientists Should Study Smaller Cities

In the past 20 years, Political Science research has increasingly focused on urban and local politics. We systematically review this literature and find that smaller cities are disproportionally underrepresented, particularly outside the United States. Smaller cities exhibit economic, social, and political patterns that differ from those in large metropolitan areas. Using administrative data and existing research, we show how cities of different sizes vary in their demographic characteristics; citizens’ preferences; resources and capacity; intergovernmental relationships; and electoral politics. These patterns indicate the potential to update existing theories in Political Science, including those about gender and political participation, second-order elections, and intergovernmental relationships. We suggest that scholars consider how smaller cities might differ from larger cities and include smaller municipalities in their case study research. We also highlight political issues unique to small cities as new areas of inquiry.

Beyond the second-order national elections model: Incumbency effects in regional elections in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT Literature provides four basic theories to explain regional election results and how they differ from national patterns: authority of regional governments, ethnic or linguistic cleavages, congruence of national and regional electoral systems, and second-order election effects. The second-order national election theory explains why regional elections exhibit lower turnout levels, why government parties lose voter support, and why opposition, minor, and new parties gain support. While second-order election theory provides the dominant explanation for countries with low regional power, we argue in favour of an additional explanation based on incumbency effects on parties’ electoral support. We test the explanations on Czech regional and national election data for the years 2000–2020. The results attest to a strong effect of regional governorship, with a bonus of 5 percentage points for parties whose governors run for re-election. Parties also receive another bonus when national-level MPs and local mayors are present on the ballot.

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.

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.

The bottom-up spillover effect for radical right parties

AbstractPrevious literature suggests a party’s electoral result can shape its vote share and calculus of voting in a subsequent election. Less is known about whether this information-updating process helps explain the success of radical right parties (RRPs) in a multi-level system. To answer this question, I use the case of Germany to test whether a bottom-up spillover effect exists for RRPs. Through a regression discontinuity design, I first find that crossing regional electoral hurdles can substantially improve RRPs’ electoral performance in a subsequent general election. Yet, this positive spillover effect cannot be found for other party families. Next, I use a panel to ascertain which mechanisms drive this effect for RRPs. The analysis suggests the legitimation mechanism is more dominant than the viability mechanism and exposure mechanism. These findings enrich our understanding of both the second-order election framework and RRP studies.

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.