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The Religious Context in Eurosceptic Voting

Elections
European Union
Nationalism
Political Parties
Religion
Voting
Quantitative
Margarete Scherer
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Margarete Scherer
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Abstract

The 2014 European Parliament resembles a ‘Eurosceptic tsunami’ (Brack & Startin 2015: 242). Eurosceptic parties topped the polls in France, the UK, Hungary, Denmark and Greece. What has been anticipated by van der Eijk and Franklin (2004) becomes true; the giant (the total of the individual attitudes negatively associated with the EU) has been sleeping for a long time (attitudes not activated to influence voting behaviour), but has now been awakened (by eurosceptic political entrepreneurs). The result of this is as gigantic (enormous) as a giant’s step; a political earthquake and the shifting of traditional balances of powers. Still, there are stark differences across all EU member states with regard to the vote share of eurosceptic parties. Moreover, the vote decision for eurosceptic parties may be motivated by real attitudes towards the process of European Union, but it can also be based on political preferences specific to the national level of policy-making. This paper highlights religion as a dimension to explain cross-national differences. I have demonstrated with data of the European Elections Studies of 2009 that Catholicism and Protestantism respond differently to individual eurosceptic attitudes (currently under review). I suggest that this is due to the longstanding religious labeling of Protestant loyalty to the nation state and Catholic openness for supranationalism. I conduct a re-analysis with data from the 2014 European Elections Studies and explore whether citizens from countries with a Protestant background rather vote for Eurosceptic parties, while citizens from countries with a Catholic background rather vote for Europe-friendly parties. Next, I test whether individual euroscepticism matters differently for vote decision in Protestant versus Catholic backgrounds. Thus, the paper investigates a link between contemporary attitudes and behaviour of individuals across Europe and the history of Reformation which resulted in a nationally orientated Protestantism and a Europe-friendly Catholicism.