The Micro-Foundations of Second-order Election Theory: Theoretical Reconstructions and Empirical Tests Based Upon the European Election Study 2004.

(9178 words) Theory suggests that, relative to the preceding first order election result, turnout is lower in second-order elections, government parties loose, and small parties and ideologically extreme parties win. These regularities are not static but dynamic – government parties ’ losses are greater the closer a second-order election is located around first-order midterm. These ‘aggregate ’ predictions of second-order elections theory have mostly been tested using aggregate data. The fact that they are based upon individual-level hypothesis has received much less attention. Only very recently, scholars started to uncover some of these micro-foundations of second-order election theory and confront them with micro-level empirical evidence. It is in this area that the current article aims at contributing some theoretical structure and empirical evidence