Productivity-based retrospective voting: Legislative productivity and voting in the 2019 European Parliament elections

Abstract

Are European Parliament (EP) elections used to pass judgement on the legislative behaviour of parties serving in the EP? Do Europeans give a bonus in EP elections to political parties whose members were highly active during the legislative term? The article will focus on the role of legislative activities in the eighth EP term (2014–2019) in informing the 2019 vote choice. The analysis combines the European Election Studies (EESs) 2019 Voter Study data with original legislative behaviour data, as well as with data on European electoral systems. The evidence points to productivity-based retrospective voting being a feature of the 2019 elections. Furthermore, the analysis finds that this type of retrospective voting is stronger in countries where electoral rules encourage candidates to promote past legislative records in electoral campaigns, and particularly so for voters that paid attention to the EP campaign in such systems. This has significant implications for the retrospective voting and EU elections literatures, since it is evidence that the very demanding democratic desiderata of retrospection can be met in multi-level and supranational contexts as well.

Introduction to the special issue: No longer second-order? Explaining the European Parliament elections of 2019

“…In other words, the procedure contributes to contestation over policies rather than the polity. Moreover, Sorace (2021) demonstrates that legislative behaviour in the preceding parliamentary term played a role for vote choice in the 2019 EP elections. This means that MEP involvement in European policy-making is relevant after all.…”

“…Voter motivations to support certain parties and not others could still be related to questions pertaining to the EU polity. This question is difficult to answer, but Sorace (2021) offers a novel perspective on retrospective voting in EP elections. Specifically, she links data on the legislative behaviour in the EP, which she gathered from VoteWatch and the EP website, to survey data from the EES to test whether voters reward (or punish) parties for the good (or poor) performance of their Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the preceding term.…”

The why of candidate selection: How party selectors handle trade-offs between party goals

“…Norris and Lovenduski (1995) identify two main skills for a good politician: communication skills and expertise. Selectors look for show-horses but also for workhorses (Sorace, 2021). For all candidates, being able to communicate is essential (Sheafer and Tzionit, 2006).…”

Introducing COMEPELDA: Comprehensive European Parliament electoral data covering rules, parties and candidates

“…Their focus on the top candidate from each list reflects the data availability constraints that have characterized extant research at the intersection between the EP legislative and electoral arenas. While there is evidence for MEP productivity-based retrospective voting being a feature of the 2019 EP elections (Sorace, 2021), no study has tested longitudinally whether the vote shares of party lists vary with the different quality of MEP incumbents or whether citizens punish legislators for their voting record on controversial issues. Our datasets offer the possibility to easily match information on MEPs, candidates and election results, thereby providing a starting point for answering such research questions.…”

“…This remains a limitation of the literature on this topic because the large variety of electoral systems used in EP elections (Däubler and Hix, 2018; Farrell and Scully, 2007) may result in considerable heterogeneity in representational behavior (e.g. Bowler and Farrell, 2011; Hix, 2004; Hix and Hagemann, 2009) and electoral accountability (Sorace, 2021; Wilson et al, 2016). For example, several larger member states use subnational districts, which have become more prevalent since 2004 with their introduction in France (Navarro, 2016) and the EU accession of Poland.…”