A record year for elections around the world

In the aftermath of the biggest election year in human history and after half of the world’s population had the opportunity to go to the polls in 2024, the POVB SG organizes a section to bring together research that aims to build a deeper understanding of the factors the shape political attitudes, participation, and voting choices in Europe and around the world. This intense period of electoral activity underscores the importance of examining new and enduring trends in voting behavior. Additionally, the rise of Euroscepticism and populist sentiment highlight the need to understand these dynamics within the broader context of political and cultural shifts. Key topics of interest include voter turnout, determinants of the vote choice, the political consequences of international conflicts, citizen engagement with European issues, and changes in public opinion. There is much debate about a potential decline of traditional predictors of voting behavior in advanced democracies—such as religious identity and social class. This has triggered work studying the importance and role of new cleavages, such as gender or education. Other work shifts the attention to more short-term determinants of the vote choice, examining the role of specific issues, leader and candidate traits, government performance, and the nature of election campaigns. Beyond the determinants of the vote choice, scholars of elections and public opinion have noted that partisan attachments strongly shape citizens’ political and non-political views, and are a source of affective polarisation of electorates across the world. Moreover, the advent of online social networks has transformed the landscape and mechanics of public opinion formation, enabling political parties and candidates to engage and mobilize potential voters directly through decentralized digital platforms within an unregulated media space. Concurrently, these platforms offer citizens the potential to become active participants in the political discourse, allowing them to connect with like-minded individuals in various digital communities. However, this increased participation often leads to the formation of “echo chambers,” where users primarily encounter viewpoints that reinforce their own, thus fostering polarization along group and partisan lines. In this challenging landscape, it is crucial to examine how both long-standing and emerging factors shape public opinion and election outcomes. Further study is needed to determine whether trends of change in voting behavior reflect a process of dealignment or a new realignment along evolving divides, such as the socio-cultural and identity-based split between the (new) left and the radical right. A comparative perspective is essential to grasp how different national contexts influence party systems and voter-party relationships. Moreover, international events, such as the war in Ukraine, the Gaza conflict, the increased cost of living and global climate-related crises, may have considerable impacts on public opinion, and especially on the rise of the impact of euroscepticism and populism on voting behavior. The 2024 election cycle, with its unprecedented scale, offers a valuable opportunity to gain insight into these shifting dynamics of public opinion and voter behavior. Scholars working in these areas of study may take advantage of data collected by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the Comparative Candidate Survey, the European Election Studies as well as many other social surveys such as the ISSP, that allow scholars to account for both individual-level characteristics and contextual features. Also, new, innovative tools and methodological advances are increasingly common, such as Voting Advice Applications, text-as-data, etc. Finally, this section welcomes output of the new Cost Action EUPopLink, which has been supported by ECPR POVB and the ECPR Research Grant.