Explaining Vote Choice in the 2019 Belgian Elections

Abstract

On 26 May 2019, citizens across Belgium went (in the context of compulsory voting) to the polling stations to vote in the third, so-called mother of all elections, casting votes for the federal, regional (i.e. Flanders, Wallonia or Brussels) and European parliament on the same day. Remarkably, many Belgian voters seized this opportunity to send a strong signal to the major governing parties, voting for one of the radical parties on the two ends of the ideological spectrumthe radical right Vlaams Belang (VB) (second party with 18.7% of the votes in Flanders) and the radical left PTB-PVDA (5.6% in Flanders, 13.7% in Wallonia). In addition, in Flanders, the first party was the N-VA with 24.8% and in Wallonia it was the PS with 26.1%. Such divided results had lasting effects, as they led to a new period of impossibility to form a majoritarian governmental coalition between the Flemish nationalists (N-VA) and the French-speaking social democrats (PS): the first being supposed to give more leeway on social reforms and the second on the transfer of federal competences to the regional level.Even more generally, the outcome of the 2019 elections saw a substantial shift in party preferences. For instance, in the federal parliament 34 out of the 150 seats changed party ownership, marking the 2019 elections as the most volatile in Belgium post-World War II, at least if we look at the so-called nett volatility. It has to be kept in mind, however, that not only the electoral outcome was remarkable, but also that the months before 26 May were out of the ordinary, as the 2019 elections followed a turbulent political period. Earlier, in December * Patrick van Erkel is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science of the University of Antwerp, where he is connected to the research group M2P (Media, Movements and Politics). His research interests include electoral behaviour, public opinion, political communication and polarization. He has published in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies, European Political Science Review and Political Communication.

Studying dimensions of representation: introducing the Belgian RepResent panel (2019–2021)

“…Over time, the datasets include standard variables of public opinion and political behaviour, as well as a (limited) number of shared variable on democratic attitudes that allow for longitudinal comparison. Indeed, the Belgian political system presents a series of features that are very relevant for country experts and comparative scholars alike, such as insights on vote choice or electoral volatility in extremely fragmented party systems, or on the electoral accountability of coalition governments (van Erkel et al 2020 ; Pilet et al 2020 ).…”