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The quality of online survey data is sometimes seen as inferior compared to probabilistic face-to-face surveys. Extending existing research beyond the commonly studied cases, we analyse six European countries, comparing data from a representative online survey fielded for the 2019 EP elections to the European Social Survey 9 and EB 91.5. We assess the effects of survey mode in terms of representativeness compared to validated benchmarks, as well as with inferences about party identification and vote choice. While we do find some differences in the marginal distributions compared to sociodemographic and electoral benchmarks, the inferential models when using online survey data as compared to face-to-face surveys are not substantially different.

AbstractWhen analysing support for democracy, researchers tend to assume that 'democracy' is a concept that travels across countries. This paper argues that democracy is not the same thing for every citizen, because collective and individual socialization experiences strongly shape the criteria citizens expect a democracy to fulfil. Based on the literature on varieties of democracy, I suppose that individual expectations of democracy are influenced by regime‐specific socialization, and depend on the democratic history, authoritarian legacies, and the prevalent democratic model. Due to socialization and democratic learning, individuals acquire democratic preferences and value those dimensions more which they experience in their own democracy. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Democracy Barometer, I test how the national democratic context in 26 European democracies influences these individual democratic ideals. I find evidence for both socialization and participation effects of the democratic context on citizens' democratic expectations.

What does democracy mean? This question is difficult to answer - theoretically, we find different ideas of a "good" democracy, and also empirically, democracy is a multidimensional concept: Across countries, democracy varies both in its quality and in the way it is realized. Yet, when researchers for example analyze if citizens are satisfied with "the way democracy works" in their country, they suppose that democracy means the same for individuals all over the world. I argue that in order to be able to analyze support for democracy in a more nuanced way, we need to take a step back and ask what democracy actually means to citizens and how such expectations are formed. Based on the theoretical and empirical literature on varieties of democracy, I suppose that individual expectations from democracy differ across countries, and that they are influenced by two factors: The democratic culture, consisting of age and quality of institutions as well as authoritarian legacies, and the prevalent democratic model. Hence, the specific democratic context in which a citizen lives matters - due to socialization and democratic learning, individuals acquire democratic preferences and value those dimensions more which they experience in their own democracy. Using individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 6 as well as country-level data from the Democracy Barometer, I test how the national democratic context in 27 European democracies influences these individual democratic ideals. Indeed, I find evidence for both socialization and participation effects of the democratic context on citizens' democratic ideals.

Since their transition to democracy in the 1970s, Spain and Portugal have been 'immune' to the success of populist radical right (PRR) parties. This exceptional situation, however, came to an end: Chega's leader, André Ventura, was elected in the Portuguese parliament, while VOX has become the third most voted political party of Spain. Using new online survey data from the Spanish and Portuguese national elections in 2019, we find that the Iberian PRR electorate is mostly in line with the characteristics of the PRR electorate in Western Europe when it comes to socio-demographics, political dissatisfaction, media diet, and the rejection of immigration and feminism. Interestingly, however, the support for Chega and VOX does not come from economic losers of globalization. Finally, both parties capitalize on country-specific issues —national unity in Spain and welfare in Portugal— but PRR parties might struggle to establish themselves within the party system of the two Iberian countries. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Even though this pandemic is far from over, we decided that now is a good time to draw an initial conclusion: How has one year of Covid-19 changed democracy? The idea behind this book is very simple. We have asked democracy researchers from a wide range of disciplines and countries what the implications are for democracy after one year with Covid-19. What challenges and opportunities does Covid-19 pose for democratic representation, participation, and decision-making? What weaknesses and strengths of individual countries have been exposed by the pandemic? To address a broad audience, this retrospective assembles 26 brief contributions, written in German, French, Italian, and English. The book focuses on three main areas and is accordingly divided into three parts: social implications, political implications, and country-specific reports. We hope to stimulate reflections and joint discussions! ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switzerland between 1981 and 1999. Uniquely, these surveys also asked non-voters about their opinion on the referendum's subject. Comparing opinion majorities in the surveys against actual referendum outcomes we show that representativeness increases slightly in turnout as well as over time. However, we find only few cases where the outcome would have been more representative even under full turnout vis-a-vis a counterfactual representative outcome. Thus, our results are in line with research on the turnout effect in elections: Higher turnout would not radically change the outcome of votes. On balance we find more cases where referendums provided more representative outcomes than cases where the outcome was unrepresentative vis-a-vis representative democracy. Hence, we conclude that, overall, direct democracy seems to improve representation in Switzerland.

This study is part of the MAPLE Project, ERC – European Research Council Grant, 682125, which aims to study the Politicisation of the EU before and after the Eurozone Crisis in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. In each of these countries, an online panel is to be carried out just before and just after the legislative elections. This report pertains to the pre-election panel of Portugal legislative elections 2019 held on 6 October. Our questionnaire seeks to model the political context of political choices, and to understand the importance that European attitudes may have in voting behaviour. In Portugal, we have partnered with Netquest. We present in this report a number of political attitudes according to stated partisanship in Portugal. We are interested in the way in which partisan preferences are related to political attitudes, including national issues as well as those pertaining to the EU. The target population is the general voting population aged >18 years old using the Census 2011 data. The sample size is 1540. The fieldwork was done using the Netquest online panel and took place between 19/08/2019 and 19/09/2019. The sample followed and fulfilled a socio demographic matrix which crossed three quotas: gender (male, female); age (18-34; 35-54; 55+); education (less than secondary; secondary; more than secondary). The resulting dataset was weighted according to a weight combining gender (male, female), age (18-34; 35-54; 55+), and education (up to secondary; secondary; postsecondary). Our sample included weights above 2 for less than 10% of the sample. To measure partisanship we used the following questions: the respondent was asked if s/he felt close to a party. To those who replied no in the first question, they were asked again, namely if they felt closer to one party than others. Only those who repeated no in this question too were coded as "without party id". All others were coded with their stated party identification. In the results we show all parties that 1% or more of ...