Voting for Europe?

By using micro data from the European Elections Survey this paper tests the different explanations for government party losses in the 2014 European Parliamentary (EP) elections. Using logistic regression, this paper finds support for all four tested theories, however, their dominance is geographically differentiated. Comparisons with earlier empirical studies point to the changing nature of EP elections over time. This finding suggests that future EP elections will be evaluated more as sui generis elections when its (perceived) importance further develops. The findings of this study contribute to voting behavior theory in EP elections and multi-level-governance in general