A ‘Second-Order’ Issue in First Order Elections: The Effect of Voters’ EU Orientation on National Elections

Over the past decades the EU has expanded its jurisdictional authority over a number of key policy areas.. This growth of legislative and policy-making authority has resulted in a number of studies, which examine the potential effect of European integration on national politics and voting behaviour. While we know that specific country-level contextual characteristics may affect variation in EU issue voting across the EU, i.e. the extent to which EU attitudes may influence vote choice in national elections, studies have focused less on how exposure to specific cues that relate to different dimensions of Euroscepticism may affect citizens’ probability to vote for a given party thus adding an EU dimension to national politics. Can we causally attribute differences in probability to vote for a specific party to differences in Eurosceptic cues that citizens receive from national politicians? The UK provides the ideal environment to test whether Eurosceptic cues may have an effect on vote choice. The debates surrounding the proposed referendum on British EU membership indicate that the EU is a prominent issue in British politics. Findings from a survey experiment indicate that the EU was paramount importance in the 2015 UK general election both in terms of association and direction. Exposure to negative prompts about EU migration is associated with higher probability to opt for the Conservative party.