Information effects on vote choices in European elections

This paper aims to introduce the notion of information effects in the study of
second-order elections. Its structure is as follows. Section one elaborates on
the notion of information effects and highlights key findings from previous
empirical studies. Section two discusses how the most influential theory of
voting behaviour in European elections can be further clarified by taking the
notion of information effects into account. In the course of this, it offers
competing information-based explanations for some previously observed
empirical anomalies for the theory of second order elections. The competing
theories are shown to have surprisingly different implications about how
changes in the context of European elections can ameliorate the second order nature of these contests. Section three discusses the statistical models and the data. Section four tests the explanations developed in section one on data collected in 20 European countries shortly after the June 2004 elections.
Section five concludes.