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The aim of this WP is to explore the significant changes in the electoral behavior of citizens witnessed in the last decades, including the steadily declining turnout in most countries, the growing electoral volatility as shown by the European research and statistical data, an increase in radicalization of voter attitudes and greater polarization. More specifically, electoral results will be analyzed with the aim of identifying patterns of electoral behavior that imply the relationship with European institutions as such. Moreover, we will study the evolution of voting participation rates, with the aim to assess the reliability of the different turnout rates and to develop an index that can briefly describe the evolution of turnout. This WP will define a volatility index that could be less exposed to methodological risks and contextual dynamics.
Elections can be analyzed as an indicator of transformations in the relationship between citizens-voters and political institutions, and specifically those of the European Union. Citizens who vote in European elections are motivated by their trust in the European institutions and by the role they can play in solving national and community problems and in satisfying individual and collective needs. Moreover, among the citizens who go to vote there are those who confirm this orientation by supporting political forces that have presented themselves as pro-European, and others who, on the other hand, attribute their consent to parties and actors who have sought to strengthen their electoral appeal precisely by emphasizing the polemic against the European Union and the inadequacy of its policies. These are new political subjects that can be ascribed to the ‘Eurosceptic’ or 'populist' camp because they make the polemic against the elite their strong point. The aim of this WP is to examine the patterns and trends of voting and electoral behavior in the EU and their role in addressing new challenges for inclusiveness and representativity in democratic systems in Europe.
Work Package Leader: Prof. Domenico Maddaloni, University of Salerno, Italy.
WORK PLAN AND DELIVERABLES
Task 2.1. Quantitative database.
Longitudinal cross-country database “Voter turnout in Europe”, first produced in September 2023 and updated through the project course, has been delivered as a result of data review and harmonization effort (D2.1). Official data of the European and national election results was used; WP2 team worked closely with WP1 team to evaluate and observe the issues related to the standardization and homogeneity of the election databases made available by the national governments. The electronic quantitative database is available to the public through the TRUEDEM project website for downloading and online analysis.
Citation: Fruncillo D., Addeo F., Ammirato M., Delli Paoli A., Maddaloni D. (2023). Longitudinal cross-country database on voter turn-out in European countries. TRUEDEM: Trust in European Democracies Project (www.truedem.eu).
Task 2.2. Infographics set.
Data on the mid- to long-term trends in voters’ turnout has been transformed into a set of infographic materials (D2.2) produced in different European languages and prepared for all EU member-states (see for the full version of D2.2). The infographics has been distributed as a part of project dissemination effort in workshops and conferences.
Task 2.3. Voter turnout trends.
The report investigates electoral turnout trends over the past three decades across the European Union member states. With a specific focus on European Parliament and national parliamentary elections, it seeks to unravel the intricate relationship between trust—both political and social—and voter participation. Grounded in political science theory, the report acknowledges the centrality of voter turnout as a fundamental indicator of democratic legitimacy. It builds upon established literature, to develop a nuanced understanding of the myriad factors influencing electoral participation. Highlighting the evolving nature of democratic practices, the report delineates trends in electoral turnout across different periods and country groupings based on EU accession and geographical location. This contextual analysis lays the foundation for examining the interplay between geopolitical dynamics, democratic consolidation, and voter behaviour. Central to the report's inquiry is the theoretical framework articulated by scholars like P.Norris, which underscores the importance of political trust and social trust in shaping electoral outcomes. Through rigorous multivariate analysis, the report evaluates the relative impact of these trust dimensions alongside other institutional, political, social, and economic factors on voter turnout. The findings reveal intriguing patterns, indicating a significant role for social trust in influencing national election turnout, while institutional trust emerges as a critical factor in European Parliament elections. Moreover, the analysis underscores the pervasive influence of economic inequality on electoral participation, emphasizing the complex interplay between socio-political dynamics and democratic engagement. In examining specific national cases—such as Italy, Germany, and Poland—the report offers valuable insights into the contextual factors driving variations in electoral behaviour. It underscores the need for further scholarly inquiry into the nuanced relationship between trust and voter turnout within European democracies, pointing towards avenues for future research and policy consideration in bolstering democratic participation.
Task 2.4. Electoral volatility assessment.
The TRUEDEM report on the Electoral Volatility Index (D2.4) focuses on measuring and analyzing electoral volatility in Europe, a phenomenon indicating shifts in voter preferences across elections. Employing Pedersen's Index as the primary methodological tool, the study evaluates the degree of party and coalition stability across 31 European countries, integrating both traditional and innovative metrics to capture this dynamic. High volatility signals the de-institutionalization of party systems, reflecting weakened voter loyalty and increasing unpredictability in political landscapes. The report identifies key drivers of volatility, including generational turnover, voter turnout fluctuations, and party switching. It explores the interplay between political trust, government performance, and socio-economic factors, using regression models to link volatility with trustworthiness perceptions, institutional integrity, and economic conditions. The research highlights regional variations, noting lower volatility in countries with established party systems, such as Malta and Luxembourg, and higher rates in transitional or fragmented systems, exemplified by Slovakia and Slovenia. By aggregating parties into blocs based on government participation, the study offers comparative insights into volatility's relationship with governance and trust. The findings emphasize the role of media pluralism, economic performance, and political polarization in shaping electoral behavior. Ultimately, the report situates electoral volatility as both a challenge and a potential indicator of democratic responsiveness, contributing to ongoing debates about stability and change in European democracies. These results offer policymakers tools to enhance institutional trust and adapt to evolving voter dynamics.
Task 2.5. Examining the interplay between voting and political trust.
Electoral turnout is often presented as a normative good in the context of democratic governance. Participation is presumed to connect citizens with the representative institutions, to strengthen political legitimacy, and not lastly – to enhance political trust. However, interpreting turnout as inherently positive risks conflating participation as a behavioural act with changes in the public attitudes as its potential consequence. Numerous studies investigating the association between voting and political trust provide fragmented findings: the link is often weak, inconsistent, and conditional on self-selection and upon post-electoral satisfaction. Consequently, turnout should not be treated as intrinsically and ‘automatically’ increasing public trust in political authorities. Instead, an association between voting and political trust judgements is more plausibly rooted in what kind of new information about the electoral procedures and the political system is revealed by the elections, and how citizens translate this information into evaluative judgements of institutional trustworthiness.
This paper aims to test a mechanism of evaluative attribution of political trust. It conceptualizes political trust as a dynamic evaluation grounded in citizens’ assessments of institutional trustworthiness and procedural fairness. The central claim is that elections operate as information-producing events, the participation in which conditions the citizens’ exposure to both electoral procedures and outcomes. This new evidence in turn shapes procedural evaluations of the electoral process on one hand and downstream assessments of whether political institutions are worthy of political trust on the other. Our analysis follows in three steps. First, we develop a sequential theoretical model that distinguishes political trust from its proximate antecedents, placing perceived electoral integrity (operationalized via trust in elections) and trustworthiness evaluations between participation and an aggregated index of trust in political institutions. We base our analysis on the TRUEDEM survey data, which have been collected in 2025 across 24 European countries and where we estimate the proposed relationships using complementary modelling strategies. Both multi-level regression and structural equation modelling are employed allowing us to examine both direct associations and the implied indirect paths from participation through procedural and attributional evaluations to political trust. This mechanism is operationalized and tested at the national (political trust in national institutions) and the supranational (political trust in EU governing bodies) levels.
Our findings reveal four recurrent patterns. First, the direct effect of turnout on political trust is inconsistent. Voting frequency is negatively associated with national political trust at the highest participation level, whereas for European political trust for both higher participation categories are positively associated with trust relative to non-voting. When the national contexts are compared, the association gets often modest or not statistically significant once election-related beliefs and attributional evaluations are accounted for, indicating that participation is not a stand-alone explanans of institutional trust. Second, trust in elections emerges as the strongest and most uniform predictor of political trust across the studied contexts, and this association extends beyond national institutions to trust in EU governing bodies. Third, trustworthiness evaluations carry independent explanatory power: competence (national level) and impartiality (supranational level) exhibit comparatively robust associations with trust, while the integrity dimension is more uneven in magnitude and significance across European countries. Finally, the “winner-loser” status matters, but does not exhaust the variation in political trust.
Based on the pattern of association between electoral participation and political trust, the paper identifies three clusters of countries. First, in the electorally conditional political trust systems (Greece, Hungary, France, Slovakia, Portugal, and Czechia) political trust is strongly structured by a pronounced “winner-loser” effect, combined with a high salience of trust in elections. In institutionally anchored trust systems (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Estonia), political trust is primarily shaped by confidence in the fairness of electoral procedures and evaluations of high competence and high integrity. Finally, in performance- and representation-sensitive systems (Italy, Spain, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Croatia) trust reflects a combination of competence evaluations, moderate “winner-loser” effects, and a greater salience of ideological and sociodemographic groupings.
This paper contributed to the literature in three ways. First, the paper advances the conceptualization of political trust as a conditional, evaluative reliability judgement, rooted in asymmetry and uncertainty. The paper specifies the micro-foundational mechanism of trustworthiness evaluation, through which an experience of electoral participation is translated into trust judgements. By investigating the sequential logic of the path and the cross-country specifics of this mechanism, the paper clarifies, why participation may reinforce trust in some contexts, yet fail to do so in others. The paper tests the proposed sequential logic at national and supranational levels, demonstrating that the mechanism of evaluative attribution of political trust functions robustly across national and supranational levels.
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