Emotions and voting in EU referendums

John Garry

European Union Politics, 2014, vol. 15, issue 2, 235-254

Abstract: There is an emerging scholarship on the emotional bases of political opinion and behaviour and, in particular, the contrasting implications of two distinct negative emotions – anger and anxiety. I apply the insights in this literature to the previously unresearched realm of the emotional bases of voting in EU referendums. I hypothesise that anxious voters rely on substantive EU issues and angry voters rely on second-order factors relating to domestic politics (partisanship and satisfaction with government). Focusing on the case of Irish voting in the Fiscal Compact referendum, and using data from a representative sample of voters, I find support for the hypotheses and discuss the implications of the findings for our understanding of the emotional conditionality of EU referendum voting.

Keywords: Emotions; EU referendums; Ireland; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:15:y:2014:i:2:p:235-254

DOI: 10.1177/1465116513514780

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