The Interplay between the 2019 European and Local Elections in Greece: Still Both Second-Order Contests?

Main aim of the paper is to test whether the European Election of 2019 in Greece is in line with the second order election model as originally formulated by Reif & Schmitt (1980). Furthermore, we will explore possible patterns of differentiation regarding the social characteristics of vote and the axes of political competition at the occasion of these elections. However, since at the same day with the European elections, the regional elections take place too, our analysis will go one-step further. We will compare these two different "types" of second-order elections at the aggregate level of analysis. We analyse the axes of political competition using the electoral results of the European elections of 2014 and 2019. The analysis is based on the regions’ data. The analysis for each election, using as cases the regions and as variables the parties, is implemented through the use of two-way cross tabulation, contingency tables, and correspondence analysis by using the pioneer program “M.A.D.” [Méthodes de l’Analyse des Données]. Through this approach the geographical pattern of vote and the axes of political competition are realized. For the analysis of the results, in order to describe the axes of electoral competition, we used the method of correspondence analysis developed by Jean-Paul Benzécri. We put the geographical districts as lines and the parties as columns. The data refer to the results of each party (or party coalition) at each district. For the sake of the analysis, the rest of the parties were coded in a group as “other”. The comparative observation of results of two consecutive elections or regional and European elections it is not enough to estimate these transition flows. Therefore, an accurate estimation is due mainly through VTR algorithm described in details in http://www.polres.gr/en/vtr. Overall, the goal of our paper is to shed light to the interplay between two possible second order contests in Greece after the period of the Great Recession analyzing the axes of political competition for the regional and European elections as long as the “geographical” patterns in a comparative perspective.