Out of step? The EU’s difficult election dance

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By Alex Hartland, Daniela Braun, Giuseppe Carteny, Rosa M. Navarrete, and Ann-Kathrin Reinl

The Horizon Europe project Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarisation (ActEU) examines questions of political trust and democratic legitimacy in Europe. This article is part of a series in which ActEU researchers present their findings.

“The relationship between voters and parties is a complicated dance, with high potential for misalignment.”

It famously takes two to tango, but what happens when one partner is waltzing while the other foxtrots? The relationship between voters and parties is one such complicated dance, with high potential for misalignment. Do European politicians do what the public wants, and do the public even notice? In a recently published study of the 2024 European Parliament elections, we show that most parties are substantially out of sync with voters’ priorities on a number of issues.

Generally speaking, politicians like being popular and want to be re-elected, so doing what the public wants clearly makes rational sense. However, we can all think of examples where this did not happen, from the US and its allies’ decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to recent efforts at reforming the French pension system despite widespread public opposition. While most governments would reasonably point to the need for pragmatism and broader responsibilities, a certain level of responsiveness is also important for maintaining the trust of the general public and legitimising their actions.

This is a difficult balancing act for national governments, and all the more so for EU institutions. Using data collected as part of ActEU, we set out to establish how in touch parties were with the interests of their constituents during the 2024 campaign, and whether the voters noticed this.

Which issues matter? It depends who you ask

Our initial research compares which issues the public say mattered most to them with the attention they were given by parties in their 2024 European Parliament election campaign manifestos. We focus on five issues likely to be at least somewhat relevant to both sides: defence, the economy, migration, the environment, and the EU itself. As the graph below shows, the expectation that parties will rationally address the concerns of the public often fails to match the reality.

Percentage of survey respondents who said an issue was “the most important problem” facing their country (red) and percentage of European election party manifesto content addressing each issue (blue). (Click to enlarge.)

The most striking mismatch is in the respective attention given to the EU, meaning specifically EU integration, EU treaties, EU membership, or so-called EU polity questions. Parties, it seems, like talking about all things related to EU polity, from integration and expansion to the institutions themselves, while the public largely does not care. We also see smaller but still notable mismatches elsewhere, with the public more concerned about migration (15% of public responses vs 5% of party manifesto content) and the economy (32% vs 27%) than defence issues (4% vs 13%), despite the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Only when it comes to the environment are individuals and parties more closely aligned (13% vs 14%).

Leaving the door open for extremists

For the 15% of voters who prioritise migration, it then becomes difficult to find a party which is addressing their key issue at the European level. Some may simply not vote, but in a worst case scenario, the relative silence at the party level leaves the door open for extremists to grab public attention and potentially drive their preferences in a similarly extreme direction. Indeed, our research shows that the parties talking most about immigration during the 2024 campaign were Austria’s FPÖ, the AfD in Germany, and the Danish People’s Party (DF), which all spent over 10% of their manifestos discussing migration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are all leading far-right parties in their respective countries.

None of this is to say that mainstream parties should copy the policies of these parties. Indeed, research shows that such an approach can be counter-productive (see for example work by Werner Krause and colleagues, as well as by Teresa Völker and Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti). Nevertheless, ignoring the issue or missing the opportunity to frame it in more positive or constructive terms may also come at a cost for centre-left and centre-right parties.

Listening and learning

Our research also shows that parties which do respond to voters by giving more attention to the issues which matter to them are more likely to receive an electoral reward. The graph below shows how likely individuals are to vote for a party given their attention to a particular issue, here for the three issues which were the main focus of our paper. The blue line shows the likelihood for individuals who say that a particular issue is important to them, and the red line is for those who specify a different issue is most important.

Changes in responses to the question “How likely are you to vote for [party]?” from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very) vs increasing percentage of the relevant manifesto addressing that issue. Blue lines show the voting likelihood for those who rate the issue as “most important”, red lines show the voting likelihood for those who do not. (Click to enlarge.)

The blue lines show that voters who prioritise the environment and migration are increasingly likely to vote for parties which give more attention to that issue, while the flatter or even negative red lines show no such relationship for voters who do not prioritise that issue. In fact, the only issue where this is not the case is the EU polity, where voters’ priorities do not make a difference to their choices at the ballot box, which is ironic given the imbalanced levels of attention on this issue described earlier. Digging deeper, we found the connection to be strongest in France, Germany, and Denmark, while Italy, Greece, and Spain show a weaker connection, though we should not conclude a north-south divide on this basis.

This is only one study during one election, and we should not ignore the idea that the relationship between voters and parties is a two-way street, with both likely to respond to each other. As always, correlation is not causation: While parties may be more successful if they are more responsive to voters’ issue priorities, voters’ issue priorities may also be influenced by the campaigns of the parties. In any case, our results are consistent with previous findings on the relationship between voters and parties at the national level, and we find evidence of this at the European level given certain country and issue contexts.

But what does it all mean? Lessons for future elections

What then should parties and the EU as a whole make of this? And what does all of this mean for the political future of Europe? With the next parliamentary elections due only in 2029, parties and elected officials may feel they have little incentive to further improve their standing with the public without the attention of an electoral campaign. Nevertheless, a range of international crises increasingly transcend borders and necessitate a coordinated international response. In such contexts, the role of EU institutions in managing these challenges becomes crucial, particularly in areas such as migration and environmental policy.

On one level, our findings highlight a simple but uncomfortable reality: the issues that matter most to citizens are not always the ones parties choose to talk about or legislate on. Even when voters clearly care about topics like migration or the environment, these often take a back seat in campaign debates, while defence and EU issues took centre stage in 2024 despite limited public enthusiasm.

This mismatch matters because it shapes which parties win votes. Across the nine countries we studied, parties which paid closer attention to the issues voters personally cared about tended to perform better, with topics like migration and the environment providing the clearest connection. In some countries, this was particularly strong: when parties gave more space to migration in their manifestos, voters who saw migration as a top concern were noticeably more likely to support them. That pattern was less consistent for other topics, and largely absent when it came to acting on the EU polity. But taken together, these findings point to the potential of electoral campaigns for European voting behaviour: what parties say or fail to say before an election can shape voters’ decisions.

A strategic balancing act

For parties, the dynamics described here create a dilemma. Talking more about the environment or migration might alienate some voters at the national level – but ignoring those issues risks losing credibility among others, or worse, handing the conversation to more extreme voices who are willing to fill the gap. Mainstream parties therefore face a strategic balancing act: they need to engage with voter priorities without being dragged into unproductive or divisive debates.

And while there is a clear need for coordinated European action on cross-border issues like migration, climate change, and defence, persuading voters of this remains a tall order. Shifting the focus away from “Europe” as an abstract idea and towards the practical benefits of EU action might be one way forward.

Listen to the mood music to stay in step

Of course, this is just one snapshot of a complex political dance. Expanding our analysis to all EU members and comparisons with previous election cycles would offer a more complete picture, and might reveal more about why patterns differ from one country or one region to another. Future research could also dig deeper into specific party families or voter groups, and analyse not only how much parties talk about an issue, but how they talk about it in terms of tone and positioning.

These questions go beyond the 2024 elections, but they all feed into the same broader challenge: mainstream parties must listen to the mood music to ensure European democracy can stay in step, meaning relevant, representative, and responsive to its citizens in an era when both politics and problems increasingly transcend national borders.

Alex Hartland is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of European Social Research at Saarland University. His research focuses on political trust, democratic values and comparative European politics.

Daniela Braun is a Professor of Political Science with a specialisation in European Integration and International Relations at Saarland University. Her research interests include European Union politics, party politics, public opinion, and political behaviour.

Giuseppe Carteny is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of European Social Research of Saarland University. His work focuses on the empirical study of political attitudes, electoral behaviour, party politics, and comparative politics in Europe and East Asia.

Rosa M. Navarrete is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her research interests include text-as-data methods, political behaviour, and European comparative politics.

Ann-Kathrin Reinl is a Researcher at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. Her research primarily explores public preferences regarding EU integration, with a particular emphasis on EU solidarity and support for democracy.

This article is based on the authors’ open access research article “The role of key European issues in the 2024 election campaign”, published in West European Politics in May 2025.

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Pictures: Dancing couple: Christian Harb [Unsplash license], via Unsplash; authors’ portraits: private [all rights reserved].