Renzi's Honeymoon Effect: The 2014 European Election in Italy

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) election in Italy took place 15 months after the electoral earthquake of the 2013 national election and almost three months after a non-electoral change of government that saw the newly-elected secretary of centre-left Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD), Matteo Renzi, become Prime Minister. While some second-order election (SOE) model expectations, such as lower turnout and electoral gain by minor parties are fulfilled, some other expectations seem to be challenged by the exceptional electoral victory of the pro-European incumbent party. In this article we show that in Italy the 2014 European election can still mainly be considered as a second-order national election because the SOE broken expectations are related to exceptional national dynamics that began with the 2013 general election.