Eurovisions: An Exploration and Explanation of Public Preferences for Future EU Scenarios.

Public opinion on the EU has received growing attention in the last decades, with an ever-increasing number of studies examining various aspects of it. Surprisingly, most studies focus on attitudes towards the past and present of the EU, yet we know very little about public attitudes towards the future of the EU. This study helps to fill this research gap by examining attitudes towards the EU's long-term future using a novel approach. We developed eight concrete future EU scenarios based on an inductive analysis of qualitative survey data. Subsequently, respondents (in an independent survey) ranked their top three scenarios according to individual preferences. Using multidimensional unfolding, we show that these preferences form three clusters ordered along a more versus less EU dimension. In a second step, we used multinomial logistic regression to examine not only who supports which scenario (socio-demographics) but also which EU attitudes lead to which future preferences. The analyses identify distinct characteristics and attitudes that drive people's preference for a given scenario. Overall, we find that factors such as occupational levels or left-right attitudes are strong determinants of preferences for the future of the EU, and that specific EU support (performance and utilitarian evaluations) is more important than diffuse EU support (identity and affect).

Trust in the European Union: Effects of the information environment.

Over the past decade, the European Union has lost the trust of many citizens. This article investigates whether and how media information, in particular visibility and tonality, impact trust in the European Union among citizens. Combining content analysis and Eurobarometer survey data from 10 countries between 2004 and 2015, we study both direct and moderating media effects. Media tone and visibility have limited direct effects on trust in the European Union, but they moderate the relation between trust in national institutions and trust in the European Union. This relation is amplified when the European Union is more visible in the media and when media tone is more positive towards the European Union, whereas it is dampened when media tone is more negative. The findings highlight the role of news media in the crisis of trust in the European Union.

Radical distinction: Support for radical left and radical right parties in Europe.

Support for radical parties on both the left and right is on the rise, fueling intuition that both radicalisms have similar underpinnings. Indeed, existing studies show that radical left and right voters have overlapping positions and preferences. In this article, however, we focus on the differences in the voting bases of such parties. We show that radical left and right voters have sharply diverging ideological profiles. When it comes to the historical traditions of the 'left' and 'right', these voters differ radically from each other. Both groups express the traditions associated with their mainstream counterparts-particularly with respect to (non-)egalitarian, (non-)altruistic, and (anti-)cosmopolitan values. Such differences also explain why radical left voters tend to be more, not less, educated than mainstream or radical right voters.