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Getting out the vote: Social structure and the mobilization of partisanship in the 1989 European elections
Author(s) -
FRANKLIN MARK N.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1991.tb01180.x
Subject(s) - appeal , outcome (game theory) , political science , identification (biology) , mobilization , test (biology) , primary election , general election , national election , political economy , law , sociology , economics , politics , microeconomics , paleontology , biology , botany
Why do European elections look more like national elections in retrospect than in prospect? One possibility is that during the run‐up to a European election party leaders appeal for the votes of their ‘normal’ supporters, and their success in these appeals gives rise to the ‘normal’ outcome of the campaign. To test this hypothesis two definitions of ‘normal supporters’ are evaluated and the outcome is to discredit the use of party identification as a means of identifying supporters. Instead, social structure is employed to identify the groups that might respond to party appeals, and the basic finding of the article is that supporters defined in this fashion do increase their support for appropriate parties during the run‐up to a European election, as though they were responding to appeals of the hypothesized kind.