While there is some support for the hypothesis that EU issue voting matters, much previous research holds the established view that European elections are ‘second-order’ in nature, with vote choice at EP elections mostly based on domestic concerns. Making use of original panel data collected as part of the Horizon 2020 RECONNECT project before and after the EP elections of May 2019 in 8 EU countries, this study seeks to investigate on the one hand the extent to which domestic issues attitudes shape citizens’ EU issue preferences and, on the other, whether the election campaign raises voters’ interest in European issues effectively disentangling second-order and first-order issue preferences. We put forward and test an original argument that foresees the election campaign de-activating the connection between domestic and European issues for cognitively more skilled citizens and under conditions of party system polarization. Support for such a model would blur the dichotomy between European elections as either first- or second-order, with – at least some – citizens potentially reliably translating their second-order issue preferences into first-order voting preferences.
