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

2021 ◽  
pp. 146511652110534
Author(s):  
Thomas Däubler ◽  
Mihail Chiru ◽  
Silje SL Hermansen

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.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Senninger

Governments redistribute ever larger shares of their budgets to enhance the economic performance of specific areas within their jurisdiction. However, there is little evidence about one of the most fundamental questions arising from such place-based policies: Do citizens reward politicians for funding that benefits their local environment? To answer this question, I turn to the European Union and leverage quasi-experimental data from an initiative that distributed vouchers to European municipalities to establish free and high-quality WiFI connectivity before the European Parliament election in 2019. Moreover, I analyze geolocated data about beneficiaries of two major European Union funds, European Parliament election results along with register data from polling stations, and a city-wide survey experiment in Denmark. The results show that European place-based policy has little to no impact on turnout and Eurosceptic voting in European Parliament elections. The findings are discussed in the light of the recently introduced European Union recovery fund to combat economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Braun ◽  
Swen Hutter ◽  
Alena Kerscher

How much and why do political parties emphasize Europe in election campaigns? The literature is increasingly focusing on two aspects of party issue competition: position and salience. However, recent studies on salience tend to ignore the fact that Europe is a compound political issue. This article contributes to the debate by highlighting the crucial difference between constitutive and policy-related European issues. Using data from the Euromanifestos Project for 14 EU member states for the period 1979–2009, we first show that Europe is much more salient in European Parliament elections than previously assumed. Second, EU issue salience depends on party position and party system polarization over European integration. However, different explanations come into play once we bring in the polity-vs.-policy distinction. This has important implications for our understanding of party competition on European integration.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146511652097028
Author(s):  
Carolina Plescia ◽  
Jean-François Daoust ◽  
André Blais

We provide the first individual-level test of whether holding supranational elections in the European Union fosters satisfaction with European Union democracy. First, we examine whether participation at the European Parliament election fosters satisfaction with democracy and whether, among those who participated, a winner–loser gap materializes at the EU level. Second, we examine under which conditions participating and winning in the election affect satisfaction with European Union democracy, focusing on the moderating role of exclusive national identity. Our approach relies on panel data collected during the 2019 European Parliament elections in eight countries. We demonstrate that while participating and winning increase satisfaction, such positive boost does not materialize among those with exclusive national identity. These findings hold an important message: elections are no cure to deep-seated alienation.


Author(s):  
Serhii Shapovalov

The participation of EU citizens in the European Parliament elections is much lower than in the national elections and differs significantly across the EU member states. The articled is aimed at finding out the factors that influence the participation of EU citizens in the elections to the European Parliament. The study outlines the theoretical approaches to understanding the phenomenon of the European Parliament elections and the assumptions of researchers about the factors that may influence the electoral activity of citizens. According to second-order elections theory by Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt citizens perceive European Parliament elections as less important than national elections that results in lower participation. However, the behavior of voters may also be affected by a number of factors which may be regarded as individual-level motivations (trust in national and European authorities, attitudes towards EU institutions etc.). With use of binary logistic regression method it was defined which factors influenced the participation of citizens in the European Parliament election 2014 and explained the differences in the electoral activity of citizens of different EU countries. The nature of the identified factors that influence the participation of citizens in the elections to the European Parliament suggests that the second-order elections theory is still valid.


Author(s):  
Joachim Osiński ◽  
Bogusław Pytlik

The primary objective of this paper is to present preparations to the European Parliament elections and their course in Poland on all three occasions (in 2004, 2009 and 2014). Election results and political platforms are included in the text as are analyses of the influence of the elections on the changes within Poland’s party system and of electoral laws regarding European Parliament elections.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ondřej Mocek ◽  
Martin Petlach ◽  
Zuzana Hudečková

The paper inquires divergences in electoral programs of four Czech political parties (the ČSSD, KDU-ČSL, KSČM, and the ODS) as delivered for all the previous European Parliament elections. The aim of this study is to compare the use of national and European themes as delineated in programs. It is assumed that, in many cases, the programs contain topics and aspects which are specific and valid for elections on the national level instead. Thus, the paper elaborates on one of the characteristics of the second-order elections theory as exemplified in the Euro-elections. Results of the analysis showed a significant superiority of national affairs over the European issues in the examined samples. Although the number of political parties varies in individual periods, the study has also confirmed the assumption drawn from the theory of second-order elections. Therefore, political parties utilize political programs for the European Parliament elections as of national interest with domestic affairs, not European. Furthermore, the study considers dissimilarities among political parties in positive and negative attitudes toward the EU. Hence, sundry approaches to European affairs may be identified across the Czech political parties.


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