Abstract
Held since 1979, general elections to the European Parliament (EP) have been a subject of research interest for political scientists as well as sociologists. Voter turnout, the political orientation of candidates, electoral campaigns, the behaviour of the electorate and the relation of EP elections to elections at the national level are topics frequently addressed by various researchers (Berezin & Diez-Medrano, 2008; Eichenberg & Dalton, 2007; Gabel & Anderson, 2002; Lodge, 2005; Niedermayer & Sinnot, 1998; Rittberger, 2005). This chapter will focus on the area of research related to the social (and simultaneously cultural) and electoral determinants of EP elections in Poland. This means that the phenomenon of these elections will be analysed against the background of broader socio-economic and cultural processes taking place in Poland during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It is assumed that these processes are not events in their own right, but constitute integral elements of a sequence of political events (similarly to other categories of elections), socio-economic events (such as the reactions of citizens to various economic or social phenomena) and, finally, cultural events (e.g. declared or fostered values of a particular society).
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Notes
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ESS is a broad research project based on the methodology of survey research carried out in most European countries since 1981, using a standardized survey questionnaire containing a series of questions relating to citizens’ key attitudes, opinions and values (EES, Data Portal).
- 2.
Using chain indices, the rate of change can be calculated by dividing the value of a given period by the value of the previous period and then, to calculate the rate of change, by multiplying all the values and obtaining the fifth root of the product. In the next step, one is subtracted from the obtained result and the final result of the difference should be given in the form of a percentage. If the result is close to 0, it means that the individual values in the periods under examination differed little from each other, which allows for the conclusion the a given index is relatively consistent. Negative values show us the medium-term rate of decline, that is, how much the values fall on average over the period studied.
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Geisler, R. (2023). Social and Electoral Determinants. In: Zuba, K. (eds) The Polish Delegation in the European Parliament. Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28271-3_2
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