Voting in the European Parliament Elections in Southern Europe: Still second order or 'issue voting'?

Do ideas related to European integration influence vote choice in European Parliament elections in times of crisis? Economic crisis, bailout packages, and austerity measures have been the central agenda in Southern European countries for the last few years, and the strong, subsequent decline of trust in European institutions has been alarming. Citizens’ dealignment and realignment proved itself important in various demonstrations around Europe, particularly in Southern European countries. They cast their votes for new political parties, decreasing the vote share of older mainstream ones. In the case of European Parliament elections, there is a certain expectation that EU issue voting will be detected in Southern European countries since they have faced similar implementations of the crisis and congruent regulations from the European Union. Based on the European Election Studies (EES) data for the last three elections of 2004, 2009 and 2014, this paper looks for tracks of EU issue voting in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain using conditional logit model. The models are also challenged using propensity to vote (PTV) afterwards to extend the understanding about the choices of voters.