What About Ambivalence and Indifference? Rethinking the Effects of European Attitudes on Voter Turnout in European Parliament Elections

Abstract

Previous studies of turnout in European Parliament elections have focused on how positive and negative attitudes towards the EU affect voter turnout while ignoring other EU related attitudes. To fill this gap, this article compares the impact of ambivalence and indifference on turnout with that of positive and negative attitudes. Using multilevel logit regression, it demonstrates that ambivalence increased the odds of turnout in the 2004 and 2009 European Parliament elections compared to both negative and indifferent attitudes. However, ambivalence only increases the possibility of turnout if the number of positive thoughts about the EU is equal to or higher than the number of negative thoughts. Having a greater number of negative thoughts, in contrast, does not discourage turnout. The paper concludes that one-dimensional measures of EU attitudes are over-simplistic and fail to provide a complete description of European voting behaviour.