Structural Analysis of Electoral Abstention in the 2014 European Parliamentary Elections

Electoral abstention in second-order elections has been an area of relative interest in political science research, especially in the case of elections to the European Parliament. These types of elections present a number of specific features regarding motives for abstention. Beyond the traditional interpretations related to contextual and socio-demographic factors, we examine a number of components that are attitudinal in nature, related to punishment and electoral experimentation, and that are the result of political disaffection. In order to explore these factors, we have constructed a structural equation model (SEM) that describes and explains the specific effect of each of these components on the participation of the Spanish electorate in the May 2014 European Parliamentary elections