ABSTRACT
Just a little more than a week before the 2019 Austrian European Parliament election, one of the biggest political scandals in Austria’s recent history involving the junior government party, the Freedom Party of Austria, exploded, eventually leading to the government collapse a few days later. These events put a halt to the EP election campaign and transformed the election almost completely into a test bed for the snap election scheduled to take place in September 2019. The evidence provided by the AUTNES data helps confirm this abrupt stop to the EP election campaign. Specifically, the focus on national issues, turnout rate and the electoral dynamics of government and opposition parties, all indicate that the 2019 EP election in Austria needs to be considered overall a second-order election. Thus, while there is some evidence that EP elections and parties’ EU positions are increasingly becoming relevant for citizens’ voting decisions in EP elections, the Austrian case shows that these ‘tender’ changes can be put on hold the moment important national issues, events and scandals arise.
