From Second-Order to First-Order? The Impact of EU Politicization on Turnout in European Parliament Elections, a mixed-method approach.

Over the past decade, the European issue has become increasingly politicized in public discourse, potentially shifting the character of European Parliament (EP) elections from second- order to first-order (Plescia et al. 2019; Gattermann et al. 2022). Politicization is commonly understood as an increase in (a) salience, (b) polarization, and (c) the range of actors involved (Hutter and Grande 2014). The 2024 EP elections witnessed record levels of polarizing campaigns across several countries, accompanied by an increase in voter turnout. At the core of the scholarship on EU politicization lies the normative hypothesis that greater politicization would lead to higher electoral participation (Hix 2006). Advocates of the democratic deficit thesis have long argued for a heightened politicization of European issues by political parties to mobilize citizens to participate in elections. While the EU politicization, along with its mechanisms and effects on public debate, has been widely studied, the crucial relationship between politicization and voter participation remains underexplored (with a few exceptions: Hurrelmann et al. 2015; Braun 2021; Braun and Schäfer 2022). This paper seeks to address this gap by examining the impact of EU politicization on electoral participation over time and across countries, particularly in the context of the 2024 elections. We adopt a mixed-methods research design to analyze this relationship. The first phase investigates the impact of systemic politicization of the European issue on voter turnout at the Member State level from 1989 to 2024 using aggregate data and an index of systemic politicization (Beaudonnet and Gomez, 2024). The second phase focuses on the two most recent elections (2019 and 2024) to explore voter motivations on an individual level, using a qualitative analysis of focus groups conducted during election campaigns in several Member States (Belgium, Italy, France, Portugal, Greece, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic). Qualitative data allows for exploring the extent to which politicization and polarization of contentious issues may affect voter participation among citizens from different social groups. This research aims to explore to what extent, and under which conditions the increased politicization of the European issue has transformed the 2024 EP elections into a first-order contest, reflecting broader dynamics of polarization and renewed electoral engagement.