The European Parliament elections

Abstract

However, the analysis suggest that the turnout increase in 2019 cannot be attributed to any structural factor. This result is surprising, and further research will need to investigate this unexpected phenomenon. With regard to party results, the authors introduce theoretical and methodological innovations, linking the structural model of turnout evolution with the second order model of party choice. Findings demonstrate a previously undetected role of the electoral cycle in conditioning the way parties gain or lose support as compared with the most recent national election.Chapter Five, Impact of issues on party performance (by Maggini, De Sio, Garzia, and Trechsel), builds on the previous chapter by testing whether there is some issue content to the results. The analysis of EP electoral gains/losses according to party issue stances (collected from EU 2019 expert survey), shows that there indeed are issue effects on party performance. When discounting second-order dynamics, some issue effects even appear significant EU-wide, although the most accurate picture is one that sees area-specific effect patterns, with environmentalist, pro-cultural integration, pro-welfare stances emerging from the North-West, and culturally conservative (and pro-market) stances emerging from Central Eastern Europe. This suggests that the 2019 EU elections might actually, perhaps for the first time, show some genuine issue content that is readable across multiple countries.The second part of the book is composed of twenty-eight chapters: one for each country. These are detailed electoral reports in which one (or more) experts regarding each of the countries offer a detailed overview of the background and of the results.The overall structure of the book reflects an effort which we already pioneered at the CISE (Centro Italiano Studi Elettorali) at Luiss in 2014, by offering -shortly after the election -an overview of election results for all countries, plus some contribution covering the result at the aggregate European level. For this book we can say that that the 2014 experiment was further enhanced. New, international co-editors joined the project, a partnership between Luiss and Maastricht University was established, the panel of country experts was, if possible, reinforced (leading to dedicated chapters for each of the 28 countries), and even the scientific content of the comparative chapters of the first part of the book saw an enrichment. However, this was done perhaps in an even shorter time span, which allowed us to publish this book within one month from EP elections. This was of course only possible thanks to all the authors of this book, who delivered interesting analyses and high-quality reports in an incredibly short span of time. The impressive list of authors, to whom our deepest thanks go, includes