Real-World Trends, Public Issue Salience, and Electoral Results in Europe (original) (raw)

2022, Social Science Research Network

Europe has experienced several marked, cross-national trends in electoral results in the 21st century, which scholars have explained using social structure and challenger party entrepreneurship. We propose a third theoretical explanation: (1) electoral outcomes have resulted from marked changes in what issues Europeans perceive as the most important affecting their countries; and (2) the latter have been determined by "real-world" societal developments, in addition to a changing party system issue agenda. We use panel data across 28 European countries to show that the public issue salience of three issues-unemployment, immigration, and the environment-explains variation in the results of the conservative, social democrat, liberal, radical right, radical left, and green party families in line with theoretical expectations, while the party system issue agenda has weaker effects. We also show that the public salience of these issues is rooted in unemployment rates, immigration rates and temperature anomalies, and party agenda-setting; and that the party system issue agenda follows public issue salience but not our societal trends. We validate our mechanism at the individual-level across 28 European countries and again using panel data. Our findings have implications for our understanding of the agency of parties, the permanency of recent electoral changes, and how voters reconcile their social and political worlds.

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