First-order, second-order or third-rate? A comparison of turnout in European, local and national elections in the Netherlands

Elections in Cape Verde, 1991-2016: Testing the second-order election model in a consolidated semi-presidential African democracy1

“…For instance, studies on the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Belgium indicated those elections are "one-and-three-quarter order" (Heath et al, 1999), as they take a middle position in the first-and second-order elections dichotomy. This is so because voter turnout is generally lower than national elections but higher than in EP elections (Heath et al, 1999;Lefevere & van Aelst, 2014;Marien et al, 2015;Rallings & Thrasher, 2005). Moreover, empirical studies have shown that personal ties with local candidates are more important than national preferences (Fuentes & Villodres, 2010) and the election of the local government is less a matter of ideology and more about personality, experience and personal network (Marien et al, 2015).…”

The Impact of the Explosion of EU News on Voter Choice in the 2014 EU Elections

“…Satisfaction with government policy reveals the straightforward interaction effect that especially parties that take part in the coalition part will be rewarded in case of satisfaction and punished in case of dissatisfaction, in line with the literature on retrospective voting (Johnston & Pattie, 2001;Van der Brug, Van der Eijk, & Franklin, 2007) (H3c, H3d and H3e). The controls for levels of education and knowledge show that these important predictors of turnout in second-order elections (Lefevere & Van Aelst, 2014) increase the likelihood to vote for each of the parties.…”

“…The unweighted percentage of 35% abstainers in the post second-order election survey is a good percentage, that is comparable with the weighted percentage of 45% of abstainers in the 2009 EU elections in the Netherlands, which was obtained by reweighting the data on socio-demographic characteristics (cf. Lefevere and Van Aelst, 2014, Table 2). ther than with a 2014 recall measure.…”

“…Education and political knowledge will be included as control variables, since a low level of education and a poor political knowledge lead a lack of enthusiasm to vote for any party in elections for the European Parliament (Lefevere & Van Aelst, 2014).…”

“…The news media provided extensive coverage of president Yanukovych's retreat in February 2014, the signing of the political part of the association treaty between the EU and the new government in Kiev on March 21th 2014, the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the insurrection in eastern Ukraine. EU re- On the basis of the increase in EU related news one could have expected that political parties would have been able to convert the massive attention for European issues into enthusiasm for the EU issue positions of their party at the European elections: many studies showed or at least suggested that a poor EU visibility as indicated by a low amount of EU related news in previous EU election campaigns contributed to a low turnout in earlier EU elections (De Vreese, 2003;De Vreese, Banducci, Semetko, & Boomgaarden, 2006;Lefevere & Van Aelst, 2014;Schuck, Vliegenthart, & De Vreese, 2016;Schuck, Xezonakis, Elenbaas, Banducci, & De Vreese, 2011;Van Spanje & De Vreese, 2014;Wilke & Reinemann, 2005). The research question of this article is how vote choice was influenced by parties' profiling on EU related issues.…”