Andreas C. Goldberg

EU issue voting and the 2014 European Parliament elections: a dynamic perspective

ABSTRACT EU issue voting in European Parliament elections has been shown to be highly conditional upon levels of EU politicization. The present study analyzes this conditionality over time, hypothesizing that the effect of EU attitudes on EP vote preferences is catalyzed as EP elections draw closer. In contrast to extant cross-sectional post-election studies, we use a four-wave panel study covering the six months leading up to the Dutch EP elections of 2014, differentiating between party groups (pro, anti, mixed) and five EU attitude dimensions. We find that EU issue voting occurs for both anti- and pro-EU parties, but only increases for the latter. For mixed parties we find no effect of EU attitudes, yet their support base shifts in the anti-EU direction as the elections draw closer. The overarching image, however, is one of surprising stability: EU attitudes form a consistent part of EP voting motivations even outside EP election times.

Impact Across Parties

This chapter serves as a link between the longitudinal and contextual perspective. The aim is to provide more detailed results regarding specific party voting as it is possible that not all cleavages play a similarly strong role for all parties. After a brief overview of the theoretical relevance of single cleavages for each party, the chapter provides descriptive statistics for party voting according to socio-structural and normative characteristics. In a second step, the found descriptive patterns are statistically tested by predicting probabilities of a party vote controlling for basic socio-demographic variables and all other cleavages.

Theory of Cleavage Voting

This chapter introduces cleavage voting, the central concept of the book. In order to give a brief overview of voting theories the chapter starts with a presentation of the traditional three schools of electoral research and some more modern approaches. Afterwards the concept of cleavage is defined in more detail and discussed in relation to actual voting behaviour. Subsequently the main types of cleavages are discussed in a historical and modern perspective. Given the changing importance of cleavages in the last few decades, the chapter also presents underlying reasons for these changes. As this book focuses on Switzerland, the specificities of the Swiss cleavage system and developments over time will also be discussed. The final part of the chapter presents the contextual aspect of voting, which will play a major role in the empirical analysis. This final part includes a definition of contextual effects, a discussion of the underlying mechanism of how the context affects voting behaviour and its connection to individual factors in the sense of a moderating influence.

Contextual Approach of Voting

This chapter delves deeper into the contextual aspect of cleavage voting. The first part of the chapter focusses on the cantonal distribution of cleavage influence in order to examine the magnitude of differences and to detect possible geographical patterns. In a second step, a cluster analysis groups the cantons into three types according to contextual cleavage variables for religion, social class and rural-urban. This new typology then provides the basis for a first statistical test of different voting patterns in the three cantonal groups. The main empirical analysis using both individual and contextual variables is then presented. This part begins with a theoretical discussion about the possible effects for each cleavage, including an interplay between both the individual and contextual level. The subsequent analysis relies on multilevel modelling that allows for the inclusion of cross-level interactions. After discussion of the findings, the chapter concludes with a summary of the most important results.

Longitudinal Impact of Cleavages

The focus of this chapter is the development of cleavage voting over time. The chapter opens by discussing the theoretical effects as to why and how the four cleavages matter for voting behaviour. This is followed by a presentation of empirical findings from both the international and Swiss-specific literature. Afterwards the empirical study – the testing of the evolution of cleavage voting in Switzerland – is described. This begins with a data and method section in which the used datasets, the exact operationalisation of variables and the statistical models are presented in detail. The subsequent empirical analysis of voting patterns covers ten elections and 40 years. For each cleavage a descriptive discussion of voting behaviour is followed by more sophisticated statistical analyses on the actual impact of cleavages over time and in comparison to each other. In addition to examining the development of cleavage strength, the analysis also tackles the underlying reasons for this development, namely changes due to behavioural or structural effects. The conclusion summarizes the most important findings and offers explanations for the longitudinal trends found.

Combined Approach in a Longitudinal and Contextual Perspective

In a final step, this chapter combines the longitudinal and contextual perspective. The goal is to examine whether cleavage voting has harmonised across Swiss cantons, i.e. whether the impact of cleavages has become more similar over time. The chapter begins with a theoretical discussion on the reasons why such a harmonisation is plausible. Secondly, the method, which relies on two different typologies of cantons that are used as unit of analysis, is presented. The subsequent section displays the development of the three cleavages of religion, social class and rural-urban over time and across the three groups of cantons. In addition to the traditional cleavages the analysis also covers the impact of normative variables linked to cleavages. The conclusion summarizes the most important results and offers explanations for the developments found.