The paper investigates what factors influence the electoral performance of parties in European Parliament Elections. By employing the second order election model (Reif and Schmitt 1980), previous studies find that smaller and opposition parties generally perform better in these elections than in national elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980; Hix and Marsh 2007, 2011; Hobolt and Spoon 2102; van der Eijk and Franklin 1996). And even though recent research found that stances towards European integration also impacts on vote choice (Hobolt and Wittrock 2011; de Vriese et al.2011), we still consider that there is more to be learned here since these studies ignore important cross countries differences. We hypothesize that incumbency, party size, and EU skepticism are stronger predictors of electoral fortunes in countries with a more stable party system and in countries where government responsibility is clearer. Finally, we also expect substantial differences between new and old democracies. By making use of a unique data set that includes the performance of parties in both European and national elections we show that contextual factors have an impact on the electoral performance of parties. The first thing to be noted from our preliminary analysis is that, contrary to previous research (Hix and Marsh 2007; Ferrara and Weishaupt 2004), we find that, even when controlling for Euro Skepticism, extreme right parties generally perform better in European elections. Furthermore, as expected, a clearer assignment of government responsibility (i.e. single party governments, longer time passed since the last national elections), more stable party systems (i.e. lower average volatility in national elections), and new democracy all moderate the effect of incumbency, party size and extreme right stances.
