For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties' 'lead candidates'. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU's lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called 'Eurovision Debate', a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission President broadcasted live across Europe. Drawing on a quasi-experimental study conducted in 24 EU countries, we find that debate exposure led to increased cognitive and political involvement and EU support among young citizens. Unfortunately, the debate has only reached a very small audience.

The popularity of televised political debates is growing, attracting millions of viewers. However, evidence that such debates can shift voters’ attitudes is mixed and the impact on voters’ preference is also mixed. In addition, the evidence comes mostly from presidential elections in the United States and almost exclusively from established democracies. A call for comparative research in new democracies has been made several times. Our research answers the call and contributes to this debate by comparing two experimental studies based on first-order national elections and second-order European Parliament elections in Slovakia. To our knowledge, this is the first time such a study has been performed in a post-communist EU country. We employed a pre-test/post-test experimental design in a controlled environment with participants randomly assigned to both groups. The results show that debate exposure has a stronger effect on opinions about candidates’ leadership skills, credibility, and economic competence if the candidates were previously unknown. Familiarity with the candidates and pre-existing preferences also function as a block to preference change. Almost all of our findings are in line with previous research originating from Western contexts. Therefore, we conclude that the causal mechanism linking debate exposure to voters’ preference and attitudes in the post-communist context is similar to that in Western countries with long-term democratic traditions.

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Proliferation of populist policies and strengthening of political populism in several liberal democracies has been accompanied by campaigns full of public anger, anxiety and fear. Our research contributes to understanding how negative emotions shape selected political attitudes. We designed an experiment with 72 participants randomly assigned to three groups. The aim was to impose anxiety by using a stimulus that is incidental, i.e. having unrelated content to the attitudes under study. In addition to self-reported emotional state measured by post-test survey, we also measured the heart rate activity. Regarding political attitudes, next to attitudes towards immigrants we measured attitudes towards marijuana decriminalization as well. Findings indicate that while imposed anxiety leads to more negative attitudes towards immigrants, there seems to be no such effect on attitudes towards marijuana. We explain the difference by presence/absence of the in-group/out-group division in the types of political attitudes under study.