Second-order effects plus pan-European political swings: An analysis of European Parliament elections across time

After seven waves of European Parliament elections and European Union enlargement to 27 states, the time is ripe to analyse the temporal robustness of the second-order model. We pool all the elections in a single evaluation and also look at election-by-election variations. We analyse changes in party performance over time in all EU states as well as in the ‘original 10’, to see whether any cross-time changes are driven by the changing composition of the EU. We also look for pan-European trends in each election, as a way identifying ‘European effects’ distinct from second-order effects. There are few consistent winners and losers, although socialist parties performed worse in the last three elections than their size and government status would predict.

Research highlights► European elections 2009 broadly confirm to second order model. ► Government losses similar since 1994. ► Bonus for anti-EU bonus is declining in weight and not significant in 2009. ► Signs of election specific pan-European swings such an anti-socialist in 2009.