Swaying Citizen Support for EU Membership: Evidence from a Survey Experiment of German Voters

Yordanova, Nikoleta; Angelova, Mariyana; Lehrer, Roni; Osnabrügge, Moritz; Renes, Sander

doi:10.1177/1465116520923735

Swaying Citizen Support for EU Membership: Evidence from a Survey Experiment of German Voters

Yordanova, Nikoleta; Angelova, Mariyana; Lehrer, Roni; Osnabrügge, Moritz; Renes, Sander

Authors

Nikoleta Yordanova

Mariyana Angelova

Roni Lehrer

Dr Moritz Osnabruegge moritz.osnabruegge@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Sander Renes

Abstract

The United Kingdom’s 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) raised concerns that other countries would follow suit. This article examines how arguments about EU membership related to economic, cultural, political, and security and peace issues could influence how citizens would vote in EU membership referendums. Our two-wave survey experiment on a random sample of the German population and difference-in-differences analysis revealed that only fears of being outvoted in EU decision-making swayed German voters’ attitudes about EU membership, particularly voters with weaker EU support, little EU knowledge and low levels of political engagement. We therefore conclude that concerns about sovereignty loss can be drivers of Euroscepticism even in a country that has vast influence over EU decisions.

Citation

Yordanova, N., Angelova, M., Lehrer, R., Osnabrügge, M., & Renes, S. (2020). Swaying Citizen Support for EU Membership: Evidence from a Survey Experiment of German Voters. European Union Politics, 21(3), 429-450. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116520923735

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	Jun 10, 2020
Publication Date	Sep 1, 2020
Deposit Date	Sep 10, 2020
Publicly Available Date	Apr 20, 2022
Journal	European Union Politics.
Print ISSN	1465-1165
Electronic ISSN	1741-2757
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	21
Issue	3
Pages	429-450
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116520923735

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).