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What is the difference Comparing parties electoral fortunes in national general elections and European Parliament elect

EPOP - September 2010. 2. Election results. level of turnout and the distribution of votes; and also comparison of these with previous electionspolitical relevance of these comparisons: rising vote shares increase ceteris paribus the legitimacy of parties' claims to (share of) government power,

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What is the difference Comparing parties electoral fortunes in national general elections and European Parliament elect

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    1. What is the difference? Comparing parties’ electoral fortunes in national general elections and European Parliament elections Cees van der Eijk (University of Nottingham) Eliyahu V. Sapir (University of Nottingham) Hermann Schmitt (University of Mannheim) EPOP Annual Conference University of Essex, 10-12 September 2010

    2. EPOP - September 2010 2 Election results level of turnout and the distribution of votes; and also comparison of these with previous elections political relevance of these comparisons: rising vote shares increase –ceteris paribus– the legitimacy of parties’ claims to (share of) government power, at least when a coalition is required

    3. EPOP - September 2010 3 Comparability For which elections can change in vote shares sensibly be assessed? (approximately) same electorate (approximately) same set of contestants (approximately) same purpose / rules of the game E.g.: general elections with each other second-order elections with general (first-order) elections

    4. EPOP - September 2010 4 EP elections Since 1979 EP elections have been compared with general elections (NEs) (antecedent as well as subsequent ones) Because the NE and EP electoral cycles are not in sync (exception Luxembourg) these comparisons occur at different times of the NE electoral cycle combining these comparisons across countries (and if possible repeatedly) provides a possibility to analyse government popularity cycles, and phenomena such as the ‘cost’ of governing (cf. Reif 1981; Marsh 2007)

    5. EPOP - September 2010 5 Potential pitfalls Comparing NE and EE results complicated by Turnout differences (differential effect?) Difference in ‘what is at stake?’ (effect on vote shares?) these two factors potentially undermine the usefulness of vote share comparisons between EEs and NEs as basis for further analyses

    6. EPOP - September 2010 6 Decomposition EE result = Previous NE result + + Effects of differential turnout + + Second-order effects + + (net) evolution of party preferences in first-order arena. or: DIFF(EE-NE) = TE + SOE + FOE We will estimate these components

    7. EPOP - September 2010 7 Empirical base Focus on 2009 European Parliament Elections Results of EE and previous NE derived from official sources Estimates of turnout effect and second-order effect based on analyses of voter study of European Election Studies 2009 (publicly available at www.piredeu.eu) NB: we excluded Belgium and Ireland as some of the information necessary for our analyses was not collected there

    8. EPOP - September 2010 8 Turnout effects Turnout in EE2009 on average 30 percentage points down from previous NE Estimate effects on parties’ vote shares by using EES voter study question to non-voters “if you would have turned out, which party would you have voted for?” adjusting samples to actual EE results by weighting procedures Calculating counterfactual (higher turnout) EE results for a turnout level equal to that of previous NE Difference between parties’ actual EE vote shares and their counterfactual ones yields effect of (low) turnout for each party

    9. EPOP - September 2010 9 Turnout effects - 2 Effects of low turnout on parties’ vote shares are generally very small (congruent with a variety of previous studies of turnout effects in special issue of Electoral Studies edited by Marsh and Lutz, 2007): Average absolute turnout effect across 161 parties in the 25 EU countries is 0.45% Effect is larger than 1% for only 17 parties (out of 161) No systematic differences between countries, between government or opposition parties, between parties from various party families, etc.

    10. EPOP - September 2010 10 Second-order effects Second-order effects consist of differences in choice because of differences in ‘what is at stake?’ Estimate second-order effects using EES voter study question to all respondents “if there would be a general election tomorrow, which party would you vote for?”, and compare responses to choices in EE Apply same weighting as for estimating turnout effects Difference between parties’ actual EE vote shares and their vote shares in “general election held tomorrow” constitutes second-order effects

    11. EPOP - September 2010 11 Second-order effects - 2 Generally much larger than turnout effects Average absolute second-order effect across all parties in the EU member states is 5.1%, with 90 percent of cases between 0.4% and 13.9% SOE varies significantly between parties: Larger parties (in EE vote share) do worse in NE ‘if held tomorrow’ government parties do worse in EEs than in NEs ‘if held tomorrow’ (but much weaker so, and borderline qua significance)

    12. EPOP - September 2010 12 First-order evolution FOE is calculated from the earlier equation DIFF(EE-NE) = TE + SOE + FOE FOE = DIFF(EE-NE) - TE - SOE Party average of FOE (in absolute terms) is 6.5% (90 percent of parties between 0.03% and 18.4%) FOE is inversely related to party size and government-opposition status

    13. EPOP - September 2010 13 Magnitude of effects Average of absolute values: Turnout effect 0.45% Second-order effect 5.05% First-order evolution 6.54% DIFF(EE-NE) 4.58% It is obvious that SOE and FOE are of almost equal importance as components of DIFF(EE-NE), which is thus not an adequate proxy for FOE

    14. EPOP - September 2010 14 Does it matter?

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