Get your Act Together

Research on elections to the European Parliament (EP) has consistently found that European elections are distinguished by a lack of European content. Such elections, in spite of the growing powers exercised by the EP, remain ‘second-order’. Clearly, however, EU-related issues have affected the performance of some political parties in EP elections, particularly in countries such as Sweden and Denmark. In our empirical analysis of the three most recent EP elections, we explain party choice as a function of both European and non-EU-related factors. Through the use of standard regression models, we find that the parties that have not ‘got their act together’ on European issues—whose internal fractionalization leads to ambiguities about their stance on EU integration—systematically perform worse. We also corroborate some of the implications of the ‘second-order’ model and resolve some empirical disputes.