The year of challengers? Issues, public opinion, and elections in Western Europe in 2017 edited by Lorenzo De Sio and Aldo Paparo Within the seven-month period going from mid-March to mid-October of 2017, five Western-European democracies held their general elections: the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria. This provided an exceptional opportunity to study public opinion structures in these countries in the particularly turbulent context that followed disruptive electoral developments such as the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump. To exploit this opportunity, the CISE launched an innovative comparative research project to empirically assess before the elections the preferences of...

The major winners of the 2017 Austrian election held on October 15 were the parties of the right of the ideological spectrum. The Christian democratic People’s Party (ÖVP) obtained 31.5% of votes, coming in first place and increasing its vote share by more than 7 percentage points and obtaining 15 parliamentary seats more compared to the last general election held in 2013. Despite being unable to secure the second position and to equal the all-time high election results of 1999, the populist far right Freedom party (FPÖ) increased its vote share since 2013 by 5.5 points to 26 per...

On the 15th of October 2017, Austrian voters are called to the polls to elect a new parliament (Nationalrat). The snap elections were called immediately after Sebastian Kurz, the 31-year-old minister of foreign affairs succeeded Reinhold Mitterlehner as leader of the Christian democratic People’ s Party (ÖVP) in May 2017. Kurz’s leadership and a new party brand (“The new People’s party”) lead to an enormous ascent in the polls for the party. As of today, less than a week before the election, Kurz’s way to the Austrian chancellorship appears to be rather sure. Sebastian Kurz was successful in establishing himself...

Next Sunday German voters are called to the polls to elect the new members of the Bundestag. It will be the fourth legislative elections in an important UE country this year, following the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom. Unlike in the aforementioned cases, in Germany the electoral outcome appears to be quite certain. According to recent opinion polls, the CDU-CSU (the party led by Chancellor Merkel) should receive roughly 36% of votes, a 5-point decrease compared to the extraordinary result achieved in 2013. The SPD, led by Mr. Schultz, should get a little over 20%. Not enough to challenge Mrs....

Emmanuel Macron’s presidential majority – consisting of his movement La République En Marche (LREM) and centrist party Modem – has largely win the second round of the legislative elections on June 18, although with a smaller margin than predicted after the first round. LREM on its own has obtained the absolute majority in the lower house with 308 seats out of 577. Mainstream parties of the left and the right realized some of the worst electoral performances in parliamentary elections: the Parti Socialiste (PS) hits a record low, with only 30 MPs, and making a parliamentary group of a...