European Elections and Domestic Politics: Lessons from the Past and Scenarios for the Future

3. European Parliament elections and losses by governing parties

T H R E E European Parliament elections and losses by governing parties michael marsh The fifth set of elections to the European Parliament in 2004 saw twentyfive countries sending representatives to the parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg, more than twice the number who participated in the first elections in 1979. On the face of it this presents anyone wishing to predict what may happen at such elections with a great deal more uncertainty than previously, but this would ignore the fact that we have learned a lot about European Parliament elections in the last twenty-five years. We have observed significant regularities in the behavior of European voters and have developed a theory—second-order election theory—which provides a sensible account of such regularities. On this basis we certainly have a set of expectations about such elections. This is not to say that our expectations are very precise, nor that our theory is without blemish. Uncertainty remains to cloud any predictions, and there remain both features of behavior that are unexplained by theory as well as facts which fit uncomfortably with it. This chapter reviews the performance of the theory of second-order elections to date and also considers the alternative merits of two theories which were developed to explain regularities in the behavior of US voters in the congressional elections that occur in presidential midterm which show significant parallels with those of European Parliament elections. Elections to parliaments within member states are held according to various timetables. Occasionally national and EP elections coincide (they 51 chapter always do in Luxembourg); more typically they do not, and European elections fall somewhere within the national parliamentary election cycle in each member state. While those elected to the European Parliament sit in European Party Groups, they are in reality elected to represent national parties, and hence it is possible to compare the performance of national parties in European Parliament elections with their performance in the preceding national election. It is also possible to compare turnout. When we do so we observe two pretty general patterns: governments lose votes compared to the preceding national election and turnout falls. In the US there are national elections every two years for Congress and every four years for the president. Congressional elections take place coincidentally with presidential elections, and again in the middle of a president’s term of office—a ‘midterm’ election. And congressional midterm elections differ from the preceding congressional election in two respects: the president’s party wins fewer votes, and turnout is lower. This pattern has endured throughout the twentieth century, almost without exception. The theories that will be discussed here have generally sought to link the regularities in each context, to see the turnout and government or presidential loss as connected rather than separate phenomena. In the European context it is a centralaspectof KarlheintzReif’stheoryof ‘second-ordernationalelections’(Reifand Schmitt 1980; Reif 1985b; Reif 1997). In the US context this is the contribution made by the theory of ‘surge and decline’ advanced by Angus Campbell (1960, 1966). A further common aspect of both theoretical approaches is that the results of the less important election are seen as interpretable only through an understanding of something exogenous. In the European case this is the national parliamentary election cycle; in the US case this is the presidential election cycle. In the next section we will review two sets of theory. Special attention will be given to two things: first, what is the source of the explanation and second, what is the mechanism of decision making at the level of the individual that provides the expected change. Having done that we can then move on to consider the manner in which these theories can be applied to European Parliament elections, what they explain, and what sort of expectations they generate about the future. Second-order theory and some alternatives Second-order theory The concept of a second-order national election in fact has its roots in observations of electoral patterns in US midterm elections, as well as German regional 52 Michael Marsh elections. It was used by Reif and Schmitt (1980) to account for the results of the first direct European Parliament election. Reif and Schmitt point out that elections differ in terms of how important people think they are and assume that national general elections will be considered more important than European Parliament elections. Rather than distinguish elections as such they...