The global economic crisis has had a major political impact on Europe and the effects have been widely discussed. A little-explored area is the degree to which elite differences among the countries of the European Union have affected voters' responses to the crisis. This paper addresses the issue of whether the different structures and ideological complexions of the executive governments of EU countries have affected voter attitudes and electoral behaviour. Specifically, the paper uses the 2004 and 2009 European Election Studies to compare levels of economic voting before the crisis to those during the crisis. I examine system-level characteristics, namely party ideology, left-right position, coalition size and political institutions, to determine whether elite differences have affected the degree of economic voting in those countries. I argue that it is not so much elite attitudes but political structures that have shaped the mass response to the economic crisis. The paper sheds new light on the relationship between mass and elite reactions to the economic crisis in Europe.
