Pavlos Vasilopoulos

Green Parties in Hard Times: The Case of EELV in the 2012 French Presidential Election

Europe-Écologie-Les Verts (EELV) has been part of the French party system for 30 years, securing parliamentary representation and being part of coalition government twice, from 1997 to 2002 and since May 2012, following the latest presidential and legislative elections. The recent electoral successes of the party at the 2008 local, 2009 European and 2010 regional elections have turned scholarly attention to the party’s strategy and electoral dynamic. However, this revived interest has not triggered research on the socio-economic and ideological profile of the French Green voter. Using the 2012 CEVIPOF French Election Study, this article investigates the demographic and attitudinal composition of the French Green voter in the 2012 presidential election. Findings show that the EELV voter’s profile, characterized by left-libertarianism, support for the European Union and environmental awareness, distinguishes them from right-wing voters as well as from ideologically proximate electorates of Front de Gauche and Parti Socialiste.

The Greek Green voter: environmentalism or protest?

The results achieved by the Ecologists-Greens (EG) between 2007 and 2009 represented the strongest ever electoral performance of any Greek ecological party. Was the rapid electoral rise of the Greek Green party a product of growing public concern about the environment after the destructive 2007 forest fires, or the result of a partisan dealignment in the Greek political system? A quantitative analysis of the demographic, behavioural, and attitudinal dimensions of the Green vote demonstrates that while environmental concerns played a role in the EGs performance, so too did discontent with the programmes of the traditional forces of the three-pole political system. This left the EG vulnerable to the polarisation of political forces in the second election of 2012.

Terrorist events, emotional reactions, and political participation: the 2015 Paris attacks

Abstract The impact of terrorist events on attitude formation and change among mass publics has been well established in political research. Still, no individual-level study has examined the impact of terrorist attacks on political participation. This article aims to fill that gap. Drawing on theories of affect, it is predicted that fear stemming from a terrorist attack will increase motivation to seek out political information, yet will have a negative effect on actual participation. On the contrary, anger will hinder information seeking but will boost the intention to participate in political rallies. These hypotheses are tested using data from a two-wave panel study that collected one wave before and a second wave after the January 2015 Paris attacks, and from one cross-sectional study carried out soon after the November 2015 attacks.

Pressing the button for European elections: verifiable e-voting and public attitudes toward internet voting in Greece

We present the initial set of findings from a pilot experiment that used an Internet-based end-to-end verifiable e-voting system and was held during the European Elections 2014 in Athens, Greece. During the experiment, which took place on May 25th 2014, 747 people voted with our system in special voting stations that were placed outside two main polling places in Athens, Greece. The election mimicked the actual election that was taking place which included a great number of parties. After casting their ballot, voters were invited to complete online a post-election questionnaire that probed their attitudes towards e-voting. In total, 648 questionnaires were collected. We present a description of the experiment and a regression analysis of our results. Our results suggest that acceptance of the e-voting system was particularly high especially among the most educated, the technologically adept but also -somewhat surprisingly- older generations.

How terrorism affects political attitudes: France in the aftermath of the 2015–2016 attacks

Abstract This study investigates what impact the terrorist attacks in Paris (2015) and Nice (2016) had on political attitudes in France. Drawing on nine cross-sectional surveys, it tests the premises of three major theories of opinion change that predict contrasting shifts in opinion among ordinary citizens according to their ideological position in the aftermath of terrorist attacks: the Reactive Liberals Hypothesis (RLH), the Terror Management Theory (TMT), and the Bayesian Updating Theory (BUT). In line with both RLH and BUT, the findings show that left-wing sympathisers shifted toward the right following the attacks. However, the results suggest that, in line with BUT, the attacks only had a significant impact on attitudes toward security, while they had no effect on attitudes toward immigration, or toward moral and socio-economic issues.

6th International Conference on Electronic Voting: Verifying the Vote, EVOTE 2014, Lochau / Bregenz, Austria, October 29-31, 2014

We present the initial set of findings from a pilot experiment that used an Internet-based end-to-end verifiable e-voting system and was held during the European Elections 2014 in Athens, Greece. During the experiment, which took place on May 25th 2014, 747 people voted with our system in special voting stations that were placed outside two main polling places in Athens, Greece. The election mimicked the actual election that was taking place which included a great number of parties. After casting their ballot, voters were invited to complete online a post-election questionnaire that probed their attitudes towards e-voting. In total, 648 questionnaires were collected. We present a description of the experiment and a regression analysis of our results. Our results suggest that acceptance of the e-voting system was particularly high especially among the most educated, the technologically adept but also -somewhat surprisingly- older generations.

Electronic Voting Systems – From Theory to Implementation

Electronic voting for local, regional and national elections and referenda is developing rapidly at a global scale as an efficient and low cost alternative to conventional methods of voting, with a positive impact on the quality of democratic representation. Still, despite the growing international experience, the harmonization of electronic voting systems with the legal and statutory frameworks poses a number of major legal, social and implementation challenges, subject to the national environment. This paper presents an overview of legal and social aspects of an electronic voting system focusing on the case of Greece.