The Consequences of the Politicisation of the EU in Media for Voting Behaviour in Six Countries

The present paper examines the consequences of politicisation of Europe for voting behaviour in national legislative elections. In particular, we wish to test the circumstances under which the economic vote may be influenced by voters’ EU attitudes in six countries, namely Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. We believe it is important to focus on the economic vote firstly because it is a measure of accountability of government and secondly because it is a policy domain which has seen increasing Europeanisation. We make use of a novel dataset collected in January 2019 through an online panel survey conducted simultaneously in these countries, which combines questions on economic perceptions, attitudes towards the EU and the Eurozone, as well as media exposure. Linking to previously collected data on newspapers politicisation of the EU in these countries we will be able to investigate the consequences of politicisation of the EU for voters’ behaviour and political attitudes. In particular, we will look at the overall exposure to newspapers by citizens to identify whether those who are more exposed to EU salient newspapers use economic voting to a lesser extent.