Die Europawahl 2014 als second-order election

Voting at National versus European Elections: An Individual Level Test of the Second Order Paradigm for the 2014 European Parliament Elections

“…Thus, our findings confirm the basic assumptions of the second-order framework, namely that people defect and that they rather vote for (smaller) opposition parties than for the (bigger) government parties. These aggregate-level findings are in line with Träger (2015) who provides evidence across EU member states that points into a similar direction for the 2014 election (see also Freire & Pereira, 2015, for the Portuguese case).…”

“…Furthermore, EP election campaigns are said to be dominated by national, not European perspec-comprehensive contribution after the first four EP elections, Marsh (1998) Koepke and Ringe (2006) conclude that the applicability of the second-order framework to the Central and Eastern European countries would be at least questionable. Träger (2015), however, finds that the EP election of 2014 was again characterized by strong indications of second-orderness, with low participation rates, strong 'anti-government swings' and more support for small and new parties across Europe. Such largely aggregate-level perspectives allow for speculation about individual differences, while empirically testing the possible motivations at the individuallevel and gaining insight in differences in voters' behavior at first-and second-order elections is not possible (Schmitt, 2005, is an exception here).…”