United We Vote? Campaign Engagement and Voter Turnout in the 2019 European Parliament Elections

Elections for the European Parliament (EP) present a unique opportunity to investigate the electoral consequences of political campaigns in a comparative environment. Yet research on cross-country differences with regard to the effects of such campaigns on turnout remains scarce, with few exceptions (e.g., Maier et al., 2017; Maier, Strömbäck, & Kaid, 2011). This is particularly noteworthy given the EP elections’ overall declining turnout levels, but even more so given very strong cross-country differences in turnout between EU member states. As a result, scholars have bemoaned the fact that “we are faced with incoherent areas of knowledge on varying dimensions [which makes it] difficult to identify similarities of voting behaviour across European countries” (Boomgaarden et al., 2016, p. 154) – both for national and EU-level elections. In the context of the May 2019 EP Elections, we collect survey panel data in ten EU countries (pre- and post-election waves) to assess the impact of individual campaign engagement and exposure to political advertisement in different contexts while controlling for the influence of varying media landscapes and political systems. Our comprehensive measurement simultaneously considers citizens’ exposure to information about the elections in the media, party advertisements, campaign material on social media, and interpersonal persuasive attempts. By predicting EP election participation on the basis of campaign engagement - while controlling for other key variables such as participatory intentions, political attitudes and interest, citizens’ general opinion about the European Union, and numerous key sociodemographic variables - we first establish whether political advertisements and campaigns were able to mobilize the European electorate. Secondly, we investigate whether specific groups of citizens (i.e., younger, or with a higher interest in politics) may be motivated to participate to different extents, and whether we find systematic differences in campaign effects across countries. In this way, we are able to assess inter-individual differences in electoral mobilization within the larger context of cross-national comparisons. Our data include detailed measures on the above mentioned variables collected in multiple survey waves from a variety of countries: the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland, Greece, and France. This country selection ensures the detection of potential contextual effects. The final post-election wave will be collected immediately after Election Day, which allows us to present timely data on an important electoral event. Ultimately, this study will provide valuable insights into the general influence of political campaigns on voter mobilization in the European Union. Authors: Franziska Marquart, Andreas C. Goldberg and Claes H. de Vreese