Evaluations of the Spitzenkandidaten: The Role of Information and News Exposure in Citizens’ Preference Formation

Abstract

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections were characterised by a novel element in European Union (EU) politics. For the first time, the major European party families put forward top candidates for President of the European Commission, the so-called Spitzenkandidaten. This paper tests whether this innovation had the potential to-at least partiallyalleviate the alleged accountability deficit. We rely on original survey data to assess citizens' preferences for each of the main Spitzenkandidaten: Jean-Claude Juncker, Martin Schulz, and Guy Verhofstadt. Our research is guided by three questions: what explains whether citizens formulate a preference for a certain Spitzenkandidat? Which factors are responsible for variations in such preferences? And, are these explanations moderated by citizens' political awareness? We show that three factors enable citizens to formulate a preference for the Spitzenkandidaten: news exposure, general EU political information, and campaign-specific information about the Spitzenkandidaten. Furthermore, we demonstrate that only the most knowledgeable citizens are able to use party cues in their evaluations of the Spitzenkandidaten. The implications of our findings are discussed with reference to the EU's democratic deficit debate.

Mobilizing Citizens for Costly Policies: The Conditional Effect of Party Cues on Support for International Bailouts in the European Union

“…Ray () finds that politically interested people have a stronger tendency to follow party cues on European integration. Gattermann et al () show that only the most knowledgeable citizens were able to follow party cues to form preferences on Spitzenkandidaten for the 2014 EP elections.…”

Converging towards Euroscepticism? Negativity in news coverage during the 2014 European Parliament elections in Germany and the UK

“…There are also differences in the scope of articles -Schulze (2016), for example, finds that German journalists are more likely to write about the EP elections from the perspective of EU actors, whereas the UK coverage is predominantly national. Media salience of EU actors is further found to correlate with a better knowledge of candidates and a higher likelihood of turning out to vote (Gattermann et al, 2016;Schmitt et al, 2015).…”

Die Euroskeptizismus-Spirale: EU-Berichterstattung und Medien-Negativität

“…Spitzenkandidaten sollten in gesamteuropäischen Wahlkämpfen auftreten und damit den Anspruch des Europäischen Parlaments auf genuine demokratische Legitimation bekräftigen. Damit würden sich europäische Parlamentswahlen als ,first order election' durchsetzen und eine informierte Meinungs-und Willensbildung der gesamteuropäischen Bevölkerung ermöglichen (Gattermann et al 2016;Schmitt 2005).…”