Why has Spain elections in 2019? This is the third time since 2015 that Spaniards have voted in a general election. In the first one, the levels of electoral volatility where unprecedented (more than 35 per cent of the voters switched parties between 2011 and 2015) and the number of electoral parties increased in a notable way, from 3.3 to 5.0 (Rama Caamaño 2016). The instability of the party system was profound. In 2015, the high degree of parliamentary fragmentation made it impossible to secure support from a majority of Deputies and constitute a Government (Simon 2016), so Spaniards had to...

Building on the tools provided by issue yield theory (De Sio and Weber 2014), this analysis looks at the data collected by CISE through a CAWI survey launched a few weeks before the British general election. Similarly to what we have recently done before the Dutch parliamentary election last March and the French Presidential election last April, we rely on an innovative measurement of positional issues, which provides a common issue yield index for this type of issues. Positional issues are in general, defined by reference to two rival goals (e.g. progressive vs. traditional morality): the issue yield measure assesses the...

Nicola Maggini,  Young People’s Voting Behaviour in Europe. A Comparative Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Nicola Maggini, interviewed by Gianmarco Botti (English translation by Elisabetta Mannoni) What is your book about and why is it innovative? The book is about young people’s voting behavior in six European countries - namely Italy, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom - in a long-time perspective, from 1981 to the first years of the 21st century. The comparative approach is thus both a synchronic as well as a diachronic one. To be more precise, the book analyzes the determinants of young people’s voting behavior in...

Lorenzo De Sio, Mark N. Franklin, Till Weber, The risks and opportunities of Europe: How issue yield explains (non-)reactions to the financial crisis, Electoral Studies, Volume 44, December 2016, Pages 483-491, ISSN 0261-379 Lorenzo De Sio, interviewed by Andrea Maccagno (English translation by Elisabetta Mannoni) This paper analyzes how parties in different European countries employed (or decided not to employ) such a controversial topic as European integration in their electoral strategies. How did this article come about and which was the research question behind it? The paper is the application of a model I have been working at during the last few years. It’s...

Recent electoral events (the Brexit referendum; Trump's victory) have testified a phenomenon that is increasingly relevant in recent elections: the presence of an information gap in the first hours after the end of the scrutiny. As first results start to flow in from specific local areas, uncertainty emerges. This is especially true when results come from areas with a particularly specific political tradition, so that the partial scrutiny is not representative of what might be the final result. This often produces a deep uncertainty, with relevant effects not only on public opinion and politicians' reactions, but also (an perhaps...