There is no doubt that partisanship is a powerful influence on democratic political behavior. But there is also a lively debate on its nature and origins: Is it largely instrumental in nature and shaped by party performance and issues stances? Or is it basically a long-standing expressive identity reinforced by motivated reasoning and strong emotions? We assess the nature of partisanship in the European context, examining the measurement properties and predictive validity of a multiitem partisan identity scale included in national surveys conducted in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.K. Using a latent variable model, we show that an eightitem partisan identity scale provides greater information about partisan intensity than a standard single-item and has the same measurement properties across the three countries. In addition, the identity scale better predicts in-party voting and political participation than a measure of ideological intensity (based on both leftright self-placement and agreement with the party on key issues), providing support for an expressive approach to partisanship in several European democracies.

It is often said that European Parliament elections fail as an instrument to express the will of the European people. However, while the elections are not contested at the European level and are often dominated by national issues, this does not necessarily imply that they fail to connect policy views of voters and representatives. We examine policy congruence between voters and candidates, utilizing the candidate and voter surveys of the European Election Study 2009. First, we demonstrate that policy preferences of candidates and voters are constrained by three separate policy dimensions. Second, we show that the quality of representation is high in terms of left/right, the main dimension of conflict in European politics, but lower on the cultural and European integration dimensions.Finally, we demonstrate that in some cases the aggregation of national parties in political groups in the European Parliament poses problems for effective political representation.

In election times more and more voters consult voting advice applications (VAAs), which show them what party or candidate provides the best match. The potential impact of these tools on election outcomes is substantial and hence it is important to study the effects of their design. This article focuses on the method used to calculate the match between voters and parties. More specifically, we examine the use (explicit or implicit) of alternative spatial models and metrics. The analyses are based on the actual answers given by users of one of the most popular VAAs in Europe, StemWijzer in the Netherlands. The results indicate that the advice depends strongly on the spatial model adopted. A majority of the users of StemWijzer would have received another advice, if another spatial model had been used. At the aggregate level this means that how often a particular party is presented as best match depends strongly on the method used to determine the advice. These findings have important implications for the design of future VAAs.

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The consideration set model posits that in multi-party elections voters decide in two stages. We expect that in the consideration stage, when voters select viable options, ideological proximity is a key determinant, while in the choice stage election-specific factors become particularly important. This would imply that consideration sets are rather stable and that changes in voting preferences occur mainly within ideologically coherent consideration sets. This study examines both claims by analyzing panel survey data from Sweden and the Netherlands. Consideration sets were indeed rather stable, more so than voting intentions. After one year, voters still considered the same party in 81% of cases and only 13% of respondents shifted between ideological camps. This indicates that voters changed electoral preferences primarily within the boundaries of relatively stable consideration sets and ideological camps. These findings help to understand how elections can be volatile, despite the strong impact of highly stable ideological orientations.