The EU conflict and patterns of EU issue voting, between a rally of the pro-European voter and a Eurosceptic backdraft

In the last decade, many EU member states have experienced rumblings from populist parties, separatist movements, and soft authoritarians. Together and separately, these serve as potential challengers to the legitimacy of the EU in the form of anti-EU sentiment and voting. Yet, pro-EU voting has not been side-lined entirely. Using a combination of data from EES and CHES, we examine the positional distance between voters and parties on the EU, as well as party EU salience in mass appeals, in the European Parliament elections. It appears that the pattern of EU issue voting suggests that voters are significantly mobilized on the EU. In particular, we find evidence that, recently, voters have especially rewarded parties with a more polarised stance on the EU and, contrary to Eurosceptic party mobilization, those parties with a more pronounced pro-EU stance. Ultimately, even controlling for other conflicts, there are robust over-time and within each party system findings that suggest the emergence of a EU conflict with serious consequences for the dynamics of party competition in the European countries in general, and in Southern Europe in particular.