The Long Shadow of First-time Elections

• In Event: Measuring, Assessing and Evaluating Changes in European Party Politics

Abstract

Why have European large governing parties lost electoral ground in recent decades? Although most explanations draw on theories of dealignment, this paper advances a novel, institutional, argument by focusing on the role of elections. According to previous research, elections have an impact on political attitudes by fortifying prior partisan affiliations and increasing levels of voters’ information. We posit that participating in an election for the first time has an effect on voters’ political stances and behaviour whose implications are felt over the adult life cycle, provoking they are: a) more likely to place themselves on the ideological scale far from the parties that were in office when voters were young; and b) less likely to vote for these parties. These propositions are examined using an instrumental variables approach and taking the current 28 EU countries as case of study. To be more specific, we use data provided by the different waves of the European Elections Study. To empirically examine our hypotheses we need to construct two groups to be compared with respect to their voting choice trajectories: the treatment group consists of those individuals who are barely above 18 in each election and are, hence, eligible to vote whereas the control group consists of those individuals that are slightly below the eligibility threshold in that occasion and are, hence, not allowed to vote. We examine the subsequent ideology and voting trajectories of these people after each (socialization) election. Our findings show that newly eligible voters are more prone to reject the ideology of the incumbent parties and vote against them in their first election. Even more important, this effect survives over time, making them more likely to vote for parties that were in opposition when they were allowed to vote for the first time also in the future. This effect is particularly strong when the state of the economy is really bad in that moment and, hence, the “socialization” incumbent is very unpopular. We attribute this impact to the especially strong modifying role that the electoral context plays for young voters.

Authors

• Pedro Riera, Carlos III University of Madrid

• Joaquin Artes, Universidad Complutense