The role of key European issues in the 2024 election campaign

Abstract

International crises and Euroscepticism have made European issues prominent in citizens’ lives. This article studies the role of three key European issues – migration, the environment, and EU integration – for political parties and citizens. The analysis centres on nine EU member states, combining party manifestos from the 2024 European Parliament elections with survey data. It finds a gap between the concerns of citizens and the political parties, an important consideration for election campaigns in general. Moreover, the analysis suggests that the salience in party manifestos has a modest direct influence and a stronger indirect impact on their appeal to citizens in most countries studied. Specifically, citizens concerned with migration and the environment evaluate parties based on the prominence they give to these issues during the campaign. The findings offer important avenues for further research on party issue emphasis and the measurement of issue salience via large language models (LLMs).