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Recently, in the United Kingdom European Union Parliamentary elections, the Brexit Party won the most seats, with 30.5% of the vote. There are claims from Nigel Farage and others that the Brexit Party would also win in a snap general election were one to be called while others commented that EU elections are often "protest votes".

Recent polling does suggest that the Brexit Party has a slight lead, seemingly surging after their EU elections win.

In the 2014 EU elections, UK Independence Party similarly won the most seats, with 26.6% of the vote. However, in the following year, it only won 1 seat in the House of Commons, with 12.6% of the vote.

As such,

• Is it true that British voters are more likely to back the main parties in general elections than in European Parliament elections?
  
  
  • In other words, is UKIP's performances in the 2014 EU elections / 2015 general election cited above the norm or an outlier?
  
  


• Why are British voters more likely to back the main parties in general elections than in European Parliament elections?


• Is there any evidence to suggest that the Brexit Party might face the same fate as what UKIP faced in 2015 should a snap general election be called this / next year or does the Brexit Party have a real chance at forming the government (evidence can be polling-based, etc.)?

As far as UKIP is concerned, their performance in the European elections consistently outperformed their performance in General Elections from about 1999 till 2015. After which, their vote collapsed in both.

On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives and Labour have tended to do a bit worse (with occasional exceptions) in the European elections than in General Elections.

It follows that, all other things being equal, the Brexit Party share would probably be noticeably smaller in a snap General Election. However, it's not clear that other things are equal. For example, both Conservative and Labour shares in the most recent Europeans were much lower than the previous General Election and the Lib Dem's share was much higher. This does not follow the general trend.

The prevailing view is that the electorate was heavily polarised to pro and anti Brexit with the Brexit Party and Lib Dems being seen as proxies for the 2 outlooks.

There are 3 other variables that affect things substantially.

Turn out is usually a lot lower in European elections and that was in evidence in the recent one. It's probably fair to say that the UK electorate considers them less important than General Elections.

Also, the First Past the Post system used in General Elections heavily penalises smaller parties as evidenced by 12% UKIP share only materialising into one MP. So even if the Brexit Party was to maintain a healthy UK wide vote, how that would translate into seats is unclear.

Finally, it's likely that Brexit would need to dominate the agenda for the Brexit Party to maintain its vote. If the election were to happen in the next couple of months then that would probably be a reasonable supposition. I wouldn't want to predict what the UK political landscape is going to look like beyond the summer though. There are far too many variables at play.

Is it true that British voters are more likely to back the main parties in general elections than in European Parliament elections?

This can be hypothesised but it's hard to prove. In recent years, it seems at least as likely (to me) that the swings in results of different elections are representative of actual swings in opinion in the country. This is hard to counter because the elections are held at different moments in time. If it's on the same day then people are more likely to not change their opinion in between votes (compared to there being a year or so in-between).

In other words, is UKIP's performances in the 2014 EU elections / 2015 general election cited above the norm or an outlier?

It's unclear what you are referring to here. It seems that the Brexit party has been very successful in the 2019 EU election. That can be explained by failure of the other parties to go about implementing the Brexit that they (those parties, the Conservatives and Labour) have supported (e.g. by voting for triggering article 50).

Why are British voters more likely to back the main parties in general elections than in European Parliament elections?

It is unclear that this is established. Like I said in point 1, it might just be swings in opinion over time rather than people voting differently based on which election there is.

Is there any evidence to suggest that the Brexit Party might face the same fate as what UKIP faced in 2015 should a snap general election be called this / next year or does the Brexit Party have a real chance at forming the government (evidence can be polling-based, etc.)?

It seems that UKIP voters (wanting a Brexit, per the name UKIP) went to the Conservative party because its leader David Cameron promised a referendum on Brexit. Given that leavers won that referendum and steps were taken (but not yet completed) to initiate leaving, there is little reason for Brexit (the leaving, not the party) supporters to go back to UKIP or the Brexit party.

The date that was promised, the 29th of March 2019 has not been met. That day has passed but the UK is stil in the EU. That is the basis on which mister Farage has launched the Brexit party with successful electoral results. Had the UK left on the 29th of March then many of the Brexit party supporters would be satisfied with the other parties' approach to Brexit and they would not switch to another party.

So, as of yet, there does not seem to be evidence that the same reasons why UKIP went down in the polls before apply to the Brexit party now. Once the UK has left and the other parties regain the confidence of the electorate, then that fate might come. Whether that's inevitable is not clear, they might also stick with the Brexit party (but that's pure speculation, I'm not suggesting either way and there might even be different parties coming out on top, e.g. a pro-remain party).

Is it true that British voters are more likely to back the main parties in general elections than in European Parliament elections? [...]

Why are British voters more likely to back the main parties in general elections than in European Parliament elections?

I suspect more specific analyses exist on British elections, but the general theory is that EU elections are "second order" (less at stake) than national elections in all EU countries. Consequently this theory predicts a few effects:

• The government's party usually loses ground


• Big parties generally lose ground to smaller parties


• Turnout is lower than in national general elections

The first two are [posited] because such second-order elections often become a protest vote (against the government and also against "the system").

There's some EU-wide empirical data validating this theory with respect to party size:

Fig. 3 plots
party gains/losses in European Parliament elections
(compared to the preceding national general election
performance) against party vote-shares in the preceding
national general election, for all parties in all elections
between 1979 and 2009.
The cubic effect of party size
on party performance in European Parliament elections
is clearly visible at the aggregate level: with very large
parties losing more votes than medium-sized parties,
and small parties gaining votes compared to both
medium-sized parties and large parties (cf. Marsh, 1998;
Hix and Marsh, 2007). Also, although this effect is
stronger for governing parties than opposition parties, it
is nonetheless apparent, though weaker, for opposition
parties too. In other words, large parties lose votes in
European Parliament elections, while small parties gain
votes, regardless of whether these parties are in
government or opposition.

The following is a somewhat dated analysis of UKIP's electorate, but probably still valid:

In this study we employ a unique large scale dataset of UKIP supporters
surveyed before the 2009 EP elections to provide new insights into their social
and attitudinal profile. [...]

We [...] find that UKIP voters are divided into two distinct groups: ‘strategic’
supporters who only vote UKIP at EP elections and ‘core’ supporters
who also vote UKIP at Westminster elections. Strategic supporters appear
principally to be Conservative voters registering their hostility to the EU while
core supporters are a poorer, more working class and more deeply discontented
group who more closely resemble supporters of the BNP and of European
radical right parties (Ford & Goodwin 2010; Mudde 2007).

Perhaps try restating the thesis. Rather than

Is it true that British voters are more likely to back the main parties in general elections than in European Parliament elections?

Ask if it is more likely that the single issue parties with manifestos directly related to the question of a European government are more likely to do well in an election for a European government than parties with a robust and generally united domestic manifesto that are split on the European question.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are split on the Leave/Remain question. The Brexit party is not. Someone who supports Leave may prefer the clean Brexit position in a European election. Meanwhile, in a domestic election, the same person might prefer the domestic manifesto of either the Conservatives or Labour.

Another way of saying this is that for the European seats, their position on spending more on National Health doesn't matter. While for domestic seats, it does.

European elections are proportional while parliamentary elections are first-past-the-post in single member districts. Proportional elections favor smaller, more focused parties than do FPTP elections. I.e. from that alone one should expect the main parties to do worse in European elections than in domestic United Kingdom elections.