Voting behaviour in second-order elections in Malta

Abstract

On the 24th May of 2014, the third election to the European Parliament since Malta joined the EU took place. The EU was quite an uncontroversial and somewhat irrelevant issue throughout the longevity of political parties' campaigns preceding the election. Indeed the European Parliament elections can be said to have an immense focus on partisan politics within the Maltese political system. One of the reasons why this may be so, relates to the theory of Second Order Elections. Second Order Election theory suggests that voters consider the European Parliament election to be of a lesser importance in comparison to the national general elections. The theory also implies that the electorate uses its votes in these elections to express feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the parties. Other than the concept of Second Order Elections, European Parliament elections may diverge from national elections in other ways. In other to pinpoint such divergences, it is important to understand what motivated the electorate's voting behavior in European Parliament elections. The dissertation seeks to expand the established literature on voting behaviour in European Parliament elections by conducting a qualitative analysis of the topic with a focus on the voting behaviour of Maltese citizens in the elections to the European Parliament. This leads to results on three main issues: (i) are EP elections in Malta second order?; (ii) what motivates individuals to cast their votes in EP elections?; and (iii) is there a significant element of protest voting in EP elections?