Turnout in the 2004 European Parliamentary Elections: Campaigns and the Mobilization of Eurosceptic Voters* Susan Banducci

Transcription

1 Turnout in the 2004 European Parliamentary Elections: Campaigns and the Mobilization of Eurosceptic Voters* Susan Banducci Political Science Department Universiteit Twente Postbus AE Enschede Abstract: The study of European parliamentary elections has been dominated by the view that these events are second-order national elections. According to this account of EP elections, turnout out is lower due to the lack of mobilization in these elections where the distribution of power and the formation of governments are not at stake (Reif & Schmitt 1980) Instead, structural characteristics such as compulsory voting are much more likely to influence turnout (Franklin, van der Eijk and Oppenhuis 1996). However, little is known about the potential effect of campaigns on mobilizing voters in these second order elections. In this paper, I examine whether campaigns have the potential to move EP elections beyond second order affair and demonstrate that campaigns do mobilize voters in EP elections. More notably, by taking account of participation in national elections, I show that the effect of these campaign efforts in the EP elections depends on participation at the last national election. *Paper prepared for presentation at the Institute for Governance Conference, Workshop Innovation of Governance. June 16-17, Universiteit Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.

2 The rate of citizen participation in European Parliamentary [EP] elections is viewed as a crucial indicator of EU support and legitimacy. In general, the act of turning out to vote in elections has been characterized as a low cost, low benefit activity for most people and for most of the time (Aldrich 1983). However, the act of electoral participation in European parliamentary elections has been characterized as an even lower benefit activity than participation in national elections (Mattila 2003). Therefore, the threshold for abstention is lower than in national elections and overall turnout is expected to be lower. This argument is also consistent with the theory of European elections as second-order elections where there is less at stake : the EP has little formal power when compared to national parliaments, EP elections are contested by national and not EU parties and over national issues where national government approval figures prominently (see Reif & Schmitt 1980). Turnout in EP elections has usually been low when compared to turnout in national elections and turnout in EP elections has been declining over time. While there have been many studies on turnout on EP elections, the debate has tended to focus on whether orientations toward Europe or the second order nature of EP elections drive turnout. Little is known about the influence of campaigns and whether EP campaigns can mobilize voters and possibly move EP elections beyond second order affairs. There are two general views on voting. On the one hand, voting is seen as a habit that people learn throughout the life cycle (see Plutzer 2002). However, variation across electoral contexts suggests that more than individual characteristics are at play in explaining the act of voter turnout. For one, the salience and competitiveness of the election can mobilize voters. In other words, individuals vote because they are motivated to do so during the campaign by parties, candidates and the media (for example, see Rosenstone and Hanson 1992). In the context of EP elections, voting may be the act of habitual voters or the expression of mobilized citizens. In this paper, I examine the role of campaigns, namely campaign visibility in the news, in mobilizing voters in EP elections. Second Order National Elections Explanations for turnout are related to the relative calculation of the costs and benefits of participation. The explanations can be divided into short term and long term factors. Long terms factors such as political interest and partisan attachments as well as feelings of civic duty are all thought to influence turnout. Not unrelated to these are sociodemographic characteristics that affect turnout. Campaigns, media coverage and party mobilization efforts are short term factors that can alter the cost-benefit calculation. For example, greater party mobilization efforts signal to voters the important of the election and the greater expected benefit of voting (Cox 1999, Denver and Hands 1973). 1

3 European parliamentary elections have been characterized as second order national elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980).This implies two particular characteristics about the European parliamentary election campaigns: low campaign intensity and national not European issues on the agenda. First, the second order theory of EP elections hypothesizes that the turnout difference between EU and national elections is due to the lack of mobilization in EU elections. Because less is at stake in EU elections, parties are less likely to mobilize voters, the media do not cover the campaigns and turnout will be lower than in national campaigns. This theory implicitly views voters as being motivated by external factors campaigns, media and parties. In other words, voters themselves do not view the election as important or not but rather the importance of the election is signaled to them by the activities of elites. Therefore, we would expect less voter drop-off between national and EU elections in countries where campaigns were more intense or media coverage was greater. This mobilization explanation for turnout differences between salient and less salient elections can be found in the examination of the difference in turnout between other first and second order elections: local and national elections, mid-term and presidential elections, by-elections and national elections. The surge and decline theory of U.S. midterm presidential party losses is based on the lack of mobilization of presidential supporters in mid-term congressional elections (Converse, 1960, Campbell 1991). Second, European election campaigns are fought over national issues and not European issues. According to Lodge in the 1999 elections, criticism of MEP s, the commission and the EU should have dominated the campaign but [O]nce again, they did not (2001, 3). Others have also noted that domestic issues dominate the agenda in European parliamentary election campaigns (Andeweg 1995, van der Eijk and Franklin 1996). Despite the increasing power of the European Parliament (Kreppel 2002, Hix, Raunio and Scully 2003), the focus on domestic issues has continued in the 2004 election campaign (Kauppi 2004). The election campaigns seemed to be dominated by the debate over the Iraq war in the UK and Italy, Spain, a referendum on Chirac s social policy in France (Kauppi 2004, 2). While the debate may not have been over the direction or content of EU policy, questions did focus on national sovereignty vs. EU power (see Thomassen and Schmitt 1999 on types of European issues). Additionally, the addition of 10 new member states was also the focus of campaigns as well. Many celebrity candidates in Italy, Finland, Estonia and the Czech Republic also gained attention; however, with the exception of Turkey s accession to the EU and the EU constitution, no pan-european issues were prominent according to Kauppi (2004). While past research suggests a focus on domestic issues, there seems to be exceptions to this rule. In particular, where a lack of elite or mass consensus on European integration is lacking EP campaigns do stress European issues such as in Denmark and the UK (Hix and Lord ; van der Eijk and Franklin 1996, 367, for examples). In 2004, Europe did enter the agenda through the forces of anti-european parties: anti-eu forces gained attention in the UK, Denmark and Sweden. Accordingly, the visibility of the election in the news media tends to be greater in countries where strongly anti-eu parties 2

4 are viable (Banducci and Semetko 2002) or elite consensus on European integration is lacking (Peter, de Vreese and Semetko 2004). While the claim is that European issues are absent from EP election campaigns it is unclear how this might affect turnout in the election itself. The absence of a European agenda in the campaigns will mean that vote choice is motivated by domestic rather than European concerns (van der Eijk and Franklin 1996). However, when appeals to voters are cast in terms of domestic issues rather than European issues this may or may not be conducive to mobilizing voters to participate in elections. According to Sinnott (2001) voters will not be mobilized by domestic appeals. As the literature on competitiveness and turnout suggests, voters are mobilized when parties expend the resources to win a close election. In this way, parties signal to voters that the election is important and the expected benefits of participation will be greater than in an election that parties do not bother to contest. Likewise an agenda focused on European issues may signal to voters the importance of EP elections and the expected benefits of participation. In this paper I am interested in whether or not voters can be mobilized during EP campaigns. There are many ways in which voters may be mobilized during campaigns party or efforts such as voter contacting and political advertising, non partisan get out the vote efforts, and media coverage of the election. Our knowledge about the way in which EP elections specifically are reported in the news pertains primarily to the first elections in 1979 and the 1999 elections. The analysis of the television coverage in the nine EC member countries in 1979 showed that the elections were virtually absent from the media agenda until the final weeks before the elections (Siune, 1983). A study of the 1984 EP election coverage in Belgium and Denmark showed that, while the first elections did receive some degree of media coverage because of the novelty of the event, this aspect had already vanished from the second elections. As of the second EP elections, the campaign was nothing special. Despite the explicit comparison between national and EU elections in the second order theory of EU elections, few studies have examined exactly how the factors conditioning turnout in first order elections may differ from the factors that influence turnout in second order elections. In this paper we seek to answer several questions related to voter mobilization and low salience elections. First, we examine how campaign media coverage can mobilize voters and whether this effect differs across types of voters. Second, is there a European element to EP elections? In particular does euroscepticism mobilize or demobilize the electorate? This question is examined in the context of the visibility of eurosceptic actors. The following hypotheses are tested: H 1 : Campaign visibility of the election in the news will increase the probability of voting; however, the effect will be greater among those who voted in the previous national election.. H 2 : Greater visibility of Eurosceptic actors in the news will demobilize the electorate in general but will increase the probability of voting among Eurosceptic citizens. 3

5 Data and Method of Analysis Survey Data and Media Content Analysis For the analysis in this paper, I rely on a Eurobarometer Flash survey conducted after the 2004 EP elections in each of the 25 member states to measure reported turnout and reported turnout in the last national election. 1 These data are also used to measure individual level characteristics that are related to turnout such as socio-demographic factors (sex of respondent, and education), attitudes (party attachments, political interest, and euroscepticism), campaign exposure and party mobilization efforts. Euroscepticism is measured with four questions gauging support for the EU. The mean response to these questions is used and all four indicators have been reversed coded so that high values indicate greater Eurosceptic attitudes. Party contact is the sum of the types of contacts the respondent reports from a political party at home, on the street, at a meeting, by phone or having received a leaflet. Closeness to a political party is measured by a three category response with the highest value indicating the respondent is very close to a political party and the lowest value indicating no attachment. Interest in politics is a dichotomous measure with a 1 indicating interest and 0 no interest. The visibility of the campaign in the news media and the visibility of eurosceptc actors are based on an EU wide content analysis of the news media coverage leading up to the 2004 EP elections. This analysis of the coverage used the same coding rules in each country and is thus comparable across countries. 2 Both television news and newspapers were coded in each country. 3 With two television news outlets and three newspapers per country, the sample consists of 48 television networks (in Belgium two French and two Flemish stations were included) and 75 newspapers. For newspapers, three weeks prior to the election are covered and for television the two weeks prior to the election are covered. The entire news program of each station was analyzed. The front page and one random chosen inside page of the newspaper were analyzed. Our unit of coding and of analysis is the individual news story. An overview of the content analysis is provided in the Appendix. Coders were trained using the codebook developed by the principal investigators. When coding was of sufficient quality (assessed by coder tests that were matched with master codes completed by the coder trainer team), the coders began to code the actual 1 These data were made available through the CIVICACTIVE project funded through the SPECIFIC TARGETED RESEARCH OR INNOVATION PROJECT of the SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME PRIORITY Citizens and governance in a knowledgebased society. 2 The study was funded by research grants from the Dutch Science Foundation (VENI and VIDI grants), European Union Sixth Framework Programme (STREP grant), The Halle Foundation and The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University, and the University of Amsterdam, to the principal investigators, Dr. Susan Banducci (Universiteit Twente), dr. Claes H. de Vreese (Universiteit van Amsterdam), and Prof. dr. Holli A. Semetko (Emory University). 3 In total we cover all 25 countries (except television news in Cyprus for technical reasons and Luxembourg for linguistic reasons. 4

6 content for the study. 4 Coders were closely monitored and intercoder-reliability tests were conducted. The results of these tests were satisfactory and are available upon request. Our key measures used here are visibility of the EP elections and the visibility of eurosceptic actors. Each news story was coded for topic. Coders utilized a three-layered list of topics to determine the topic of each story. For example a story about a homicide was assigned a code for homicide. This specific category was part of a larger category (non-politically motivated crime) which was part of a larger category domestic crime ). News about European elections was designated a range of codes that enables us to identify when a story was about the elections and what the specific topics of these stories were. For the current analysis, we rely on the highest level of classification and refer to all EP election news stories collectively. The proportion of stories on all news broadcasts and in the newspapers where the EP election was the topic of the story is used to indicate the visibility of the campaign in a country. Up to 20 actors appearing were coded in each newspaper and TV story. Actors in news stories are political actors (candidates, members of parliament, government ministers), celebrities, institutions, organizations or members of the public. As with the story topics, actors were coded in several steps. From the coding process, the type of actor (party member, leader, spokesperson, etc.) and the particular party to which the actor belongs can be determined. The proportion of actors from eurosceptic parties appearing in stories about the EP election is used to indicate the visibility of eurosceptic actors. Only actors from hard eurosceptic parties are counted as eurosceptic actors. Hard euroscepticism is where there is a principled opposition to the EU and European integration and can be seen in parties who think their countries should withdraw from the membership or whose policies towards the EU are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of European integration (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2002). The listing of hard eurosceptic parties given by Taggart and Szczerbiak (2002) is supplemented by press accounts of the campaign and the final listing of eurosceptic parties was verified by country experts. Analysis The probability of voting in the EP election is modeled as a function of individual characteristics, campaign factors and institutional arrangements (yoked elections, Sunday voting). In measuring campaign effects it is necessary to separate the increase in probability of voting due to the campaign from the probability of voting in the absence of a campaign. Individuals have a likelihood of voting given factors that are prior to the campaign and it is necessary to control for this in order to measure campaign effects. Therefore, to control for the pre-campaign probability of voting and to test the second order nature of EP elections, participation in the EP election is modeled as conditional on turnout in the last national election. This technique is similar to a transition model in the analysis of panel data. This model can take into account the effects of campaign on voting while considering the respondent s past voting behavior which makes it possible 4 Coding was conducted by trained and supervised coders working for MedienTenor in Bonn, Germany, Dover, England, and Ostrawa, Slovakia, with supervision and close cooperation by the principal investigators. 5

7 to distinguish whether different processes are at work for those who voted in the last national election versus those who did not vote in the last national election. The probability of voting in the 2004 EP election, conditional upon having reported voting in the last national election, is modeled in the following way using a logit link function. 5 a. logit[pr(y it =1 y i,t-1 =0)]=logit(p 01 )=y* it (y i,t-1 =0)=x it β 0 b. logit[pr(y it =1 y i,t-1 =1)]=logit(p 11 )=y* it (y i,t-1 =1)=x it β 1 Where y t is the probability of voting in the EP election and y t-1 is the respondent s report of voting in the last national election and x represents the vector of independent variables hypothesized to influence the probability of voting in the EP election. Equation a shows the probability of voting in the EP election conditional upon not having voted at the last national election while equation b shows the probability of voting conditional upon reported voting in the last national election. The two models can be combined into a single equation: c. logit[pr(y it =1 y i,t-1 )]=logit(p 11 )=y* it (y i,t-1 =1)=x it β 0 + y i,t-1 x it α where β 1 = β 0 + α. Because the two equations are estimated together, I can test α = 0 [β 1 β 0 =0] indicating whether campaign effects are constant irregardless of past voting behavior. 6 The next section discusses the results. Results I begin by examining the aggregate relationship between the variables of interest. I am mainly interested in the relationship between campaign visibility, eurosceptic actors and turnout in the EP election. Because I am interested in the ability of campaigns to mobilize citizens in second order elections, I look at reported turnout differences between the 2004 EP election and the last national election. Figure 1 shows the relationship between campaign visibility and the proportion of respondent who voted in both the national election and the EP election visibility. It is a fairly weak relationship (r=.25) but in the expected direction: greater visibility equals greater retention of national election voters. Slovakia is an outlier with average visibility but very low turnout. Figure 2 shows the relationship between the visibility of Euroscpetic actors and proportion of respondents reporting turnout in both elections. When examining all countries together there is again a weak relationship (r=-.27) with Slovakia as an outlier. 5 The detail for this conditional model is based on the conditional transitional logit model developed by Hillygus (2004, 59). 6 Equation c is estimated by interacting all independent variables with voting status in the last national election. 6

8 However, if eurosceptic countries (those countries where the percentage of people agreeing that EU membership is a good things is below 40%) are considered separately, there is stronger negative relationship between actor visibility and turnout ( -.47). This aggregate analysis suggests that the demobilizing effects of euroscpetic actors is conditional. That demobilizing effects would be stronger for eurosceptics is contrary to expectations that eurosceptic voters. However, an alternative explanation is that there is a spurious relationship between eurosceptic actors and turnout. Eurosceptic countries most likely tend to have greater number of eurosceptic actors and this will be reflected in news coverage and turnout tends to be lower in euroscpetic countries because eurosceptic voters are less engaged in European affairs. Table 1 shows the results of the conditional logit estimates of reported participation in the EP election. The first column reports the effects conditional upon not voting in the last election and the third column of coefficients shows the effects conditional upon participation in the last national election. The final column in the table reports the results testing whether the differences between the coefficients are equal to 0. The second and fourth columns report the first differences. Focusing on the mobilizing effects of campaigns, we see that party contact and exposure to advertising do mobilize voters. However, this effect is conditional on prior participation. Party contact and ad exposure do nothing to mobilize national election voters but these type of mobilization activities do mobilize non-voters. The differences between effects are significant. The relationship between the media content measures and turnout show a different relationship. These effects are also conditional but their effects are limited to voters for the most part. The visibility of the campaign increases the probability of voting among national election voters but not among non-voters. Hillygus finds similar inconsistencies across types of mobilizing activities. Party contact mobilizes voters while ad exposure mobilizes intended non-voters (2004, 60). As for the mobilizing influence of eurosceptic actors, the effect is conditional upon two factors. We see that as eurosceptic actors become more visible national election voters are demobilized but this is true for non-eurosceptic citizens. The positive interaction term between visibility of euroscpetic actors and euroscepticism suggests that eurosceptic citizens are mobilized by the visibility of eurosceptic actors. Again, this is the case with national election voters. There is some evidence that there is an opposite effect fo those who did not vote in the last election eurosceptic non-voters were more likely to be demobilized. Discussion I am interested in establishing the extent to which campaign visibility in the news and the visibility of euroscpeptic actors, actually matters when it comes to an individual s decision to vote in the 2004 EP parliamentary elections, an election in which turnout reached all time lows in many countries and 10 new member states were participating in their first Europe-wide election. Previous research on turnout in EU elections has emphasized contextual influences such as compulsory and Sunday voting, as well as 7

9 support for the EU, as important variables for predicting turnout but little has been said about the relative influence of these variables in comparison with campaign news variables and other campaign mobilization measures such as advertising and party contact variables in the context of EU elections. Furthermore, past research on the second order nature of EP elections has not taken into account how the influences in participation in EP elections may be conditional on participation in a national election. The multivariate analysis reveals that campaign visibility and the eurosceptic visibility are important mobilizing forces, but that these effects differ depending on participation in first-order elections. The findings suggest that, as the second order theory suggests, that turnout is lower in second order elections because voters are not mobilized. The results presented in this paper suggest that campaigns can make a difference in second-order elections and if parties and the media mobilize second order elections can approximate first order elections. 8

10 References Kauppi, Niilo Europe : A Side Issue in European Parliamentary Elections EUSA Review 17(3):1-3. Mattila, Mikko Why Bother? Determinants of Turnout in the European Elections. Electoral Studies 22: Flickinger, Richard S., Studlar, Donley T. and Stephen E. Bennett Turnout in European Parliament Elections: Towards a European-Centred Model. Paper presented at the National Europe Centre at the Australian National University, Canberra, 8 August, Reif, Karlheinz and Hermann Schmitt Nine Second-Order National Elections: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results. European Journal of Political Research 8:3-44. Rose, Richard Europe Expans, Turnout Falls: The Significane of the 2004 European Parliament Election, Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Schmitt, Hermann The European Parliament Elections of June 2004: Still Second-order? Paper available online at Downloaded 31 May, Taggart, Paul and Aleks Szczerbiak The Party Politics of Euroscpeticism in EU Member and Candidate States. Paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research Joint Workshops, Turn, March

11 Reported voting last national and EP election Visibility of EP Election on the News Figure 1: Visibility of the Campaign in the News and Turnout in EP Elections Note: Solid line represents regression line. 10

12 Reported voting last national and EP election Visibility of Eurosceptic Actors Figure 2: Eurosceptic Actors and Turnout in EP Elections Note: Solid line represents regression line for Eurosceptic countries while dashed line represents regression line for non-eurosceptic countries.

13 Table 1 : Estimates from Transition Model Predicting Turnout in Ep Election Conditional on Turnout at Last National Election Last National Election Did not vote (B 0 ) Voted (B 1 ) B 0 -B 1 =0 coef. 1st dif coef 1st dif Female 0.20 ** ** (0.06) (0.07) Age (in 10's) ** 0.55 ** (0.03) (0.04) Low Education ** * (0.16) (0.17) Medium Education * (0.11) (0.13) Close to a party 1.11 ** ** ** (0.17) (0.16) Interested in Politics 0.55 ** ** (0.13) (0.10) Eurosceptic (0.35) (0.28) Contact by party 1.06 ** * (0.32) (0.15) Saw advertisement 0.45 ** ** (0.10) (0.12) Visibility of Campaign ** 0.24 (0.02) (0.01) Visibility of Eurosceptic actors ** a (0.02) (0.02) Yoked election (0.43) (0.30) Sunday voting (0.38) (0.25) Post-communist country (0.30) (0.27) Months since last national election (0.02) (0.01) Visibility of Eurosceptic actors * Eurosceptic a * 0.29 * (0.03) (0.03) Intercept ** 0.82 ** (0.53) (0.47) n 2016 Cragg & Uhler's R2: 0.32 Correctly predicted 0.72 PRE 0.37 Note: Table entries are coefficient values with standard errors in paretheses. ** p <.01, * p <.05 a.05 <.06. Standard errors are adjusted for clustering by country. 1

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