Does Europe Matter in the European Electoral Arena? Populist Radical Right Party Support in the 2014 European Elections

Abstract

The unprecedented surge of populist radical right (PRR) parties across Europe is one of the most striking outcomes of the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections. To understand this phenomenon, this study attempts to identify the motivations underlying the PRR party support by simultaneously considering the three core ideologies of PRR parties (ethno-nationalism, authoritarianism and populism) and the two types of voting behaviour in EP elections (sincere voting and protest voting). At the same time, assuming that PRR party voters in EP elections could not be homogeneous when taking into consideration their vote choice in the previous national parliament election, it also examines the extent to which the motivation for PRR party support were different between the two types of PRR voters (PRR consistent voters and PRR switching voters). By analysing voting behaviour in Western European countries in which PRR parties were particularly successful in 2014, this study demonstrates that PRR voters in the 2014 EP elections were indeed motivated by European concerns and that they behaved differently according to their vote choice in the previous national parliament election. The results imply that the existing literature based on the ‘second-order election (SOE)’ model has some limitations with regard to fully explaining voting behaviour in EP elections and that PRR voters in EP elections are not a homogeneous group.