The Role of the Economic Conditions in Second-Order Elections

Apart from some scarce examples, the analyses of second-order elections focus on non-economic predictors of the vote –such as the timing of the election within the first-order cycle or the parties’ size and incumbency. Similarly, the analyses of the economic voting tend to focus on national elections because it is rightly assumed that, there, the attribution of responsibility is clearer. The two ‘separate tables’ converge rarely, but some productive examples exist such as Kousser (2004) or Schackel (2014). In line with the two alluded examples, this paper will mix the two traditions. Relying on the concept of ‘second-order economic voting’ (Fauvelle-Aymar and Lewis-Beck, 2011; and Bosch, 2015), the paper will try to analyse how economic conditions affect electoral outcomes. However, contrary to usual practice, it will not use single-level economic evaluations. Instead, it will assess how the European multi-level electoral system brings into play different-level economic evaluations in order to shape the citizen’s economic voting. For instance, it may be that voters mix a second-order logic with economic voting doing the following: they evaluate the economic performance of the first-order incumbents and vote for or against their fellow-party candidacies to the European elections. The differences in the voters’ tendency to use different-level economic evaluations in deciding the vote will be explained introducing contextual variables. It could be, for instance, that the well-known differences in attribution of responsibilities in national economic voting is also transferred to the second-order logic. If so, different institutional arrangements at the national level could generate different levels of second-order economic voting. The results of the alluded analyses will be presented in the Joint Sessions with data of the 2009 and 2014 European elections. Also, the expected results for the 2019 analysis will be predicted. The final article for publication will include results for the three elections.