European Parliament Election Study 2019, Voter Study

The 2019 European Election Study (EES) Voter Study is a post-election study, conducted in all 28 EU member states after the elections to the European Parliament were held between 23 and 26 May 2019. The main objective of the 2019 EES Voter study is to study electoral participation and voting behaviour in European Parliament elections, but more than that. It is also concerned with the evolution of an EU political community and a European public sphere, with citizens’ perceptions of and preferences about the EU political regime, with their evaluations of EU political performance, and the consequences of Brexit.

The survey was conducted by Gallup International. The data collection was mostly conducted online. The respondents were selected randomly from access panel databases using stratification variables, with the exception of Malta and Cyprus where a multi-stage Random Digit Dialing approach was used. In all countries, the samples were stratified by gender, age, region and type of locality. The sample size is roughly 1,000 interviews in each EU member state (except Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta where the sample size is 500). The total sample size is 26,538.

The questionnaire covers items on electoral behavior, such as questions on electoral participation and party choice at the EU and national level, party preferences, and propensity to support particular parties; general political attitudes; interest in politics; background characteristics such as gender, age, education, religion. Innovations in EES 2019 include batteries of questions about the consequences of Brexit and on liberal democratic attitudes.<br>Most important issue or problem in the country (open); most suitable party to solve this problem (country-specific); satisfaction with democracy; satisfaction with democracy in the EU; satisfaction with government performance; turnout in European Parliament elections; voting behaviour (party preference) in European Parliament elections (country-specific); personal attention to the European election campaign in public media and social media; Voting behaviour in the last federal election (country-specific); likelihood of ever voting for certain parties (country-specific); left-right self-placement; left-right placement of various parties (country-specific); political attitude towards various issues (state regulation and control of the market, redistribution of wealth, same-sex marriage, restriction of the right to privacy, restrictive immigration policy, environmental protection); opinion on the country´s membership in the European Union (preference for continued membership in the EU versus the country leaving the EU); importance of living in a democratically governed country; opinion on the following statements: Independent judges should be able to overrule the decisions of the democratically elected government if the decisions violate the rights of individuals or groups in society, Governments should be allowed to prohibit a peaceful protest if many citizens will be offended by its slogans, In order to secure the independence of the public media, elected politicians should have no influence on the content of their broadcasting, Having a strong leader in government is good for (the country), even if the leader bends the rules to get things done, The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions; trust in the national Parliament (country-specific); trust in the European Parliament; development of the general economic situation in the country compared to 12 months ago; expected development of the general economic situation in the country in the next 12 months; interest in politics; assessment of the country´s membership in the European Union as a good thing; personal opinion rating of different parties (country-specific) on European unification (has already gone too far vs. should be pushed further; party affinity; party loyalty or just sympathiser; allocation of supporting European group of candidates Manfred Weber, Frans Timmermans and Jan Zahradil for the post of President of the European Commission (candidate recognition battery); consequences of Brexit for the UK; expected consequences of Brexit for own country; general view on Brexit (UK should remain EU member, is right to leave the European Union, should never have joined the European Union); expected consequences for one´s own country after leaving the EU (experiment); country´s main goals for the next ten years (high level of economic growth, strong defence forces, more say for people in shaping their jobs and in their communities, beautifying cities and landscapes); liberal democratic attitudes (maintaining order in the nation, giving people more say in important government decisions, fighting rising prices, protecting free speech, stable economy, progress towards a less impersonal and more humane society, progress towards a society where ideas matter more than money, fighting crime); approval of statements on various social issues: Homosexuals and feminists should be commended for being brave enough to oppose traditional family values; what our country really needs instead of more civil rights is a hefty dose of law and order; our country will be destroyed one day if we don´t smash the perversions that eat away at our morals and traditional beliefs; it´s wonderful that young people today have more freedom to protest against things they don´t like and make their own ´rules´ for their behaviour; people should pay less attention to the Bible and other old traditional forms of religious guidance and instead develop their own standards of what is moral and immoral; the only way for our country to survive the coming crisis is to return to our values, put strong leaders in power and silence troublemakers who spread bad ideas.

In addition, in the UK: voting behaviour in the referendum on UK membership of the EU; self-assessment since the referendum as a Leaver or Remainer.

Demography: sex; age (year of birth); age at end of full-time education and education level; union membership (respondent or household member); country of birth; year of moving to the country; family situation; employment status; industry; self-assessed social class; urban or rural area of residence; religious denomination; frequency of attendance at religious events; household standard of living.

Additionally coded were: respondent ID; serial number; country; ISO country codes; region (country-specific); weighting factors; interview language (only in Belgium, Estonia, Finland and Lithuania); start of interview (time); end of interview (time and date); time spent on question 7 on voting behaviour in the European Parliament elections; time spent on question 27 (candidate recognition battery); operating system; mobile device (categories); assignment to experimental groups (treatments Q31).