Abstract

This article analyzes the contents of party communications - election manifestos, posters and political advertisements -, in the light of the main scholarly work on the European elections. It firstly assesses the validity of the «second-order election» thesis in terms of the quantity of communications by examining the prevalence of the national dimension over the European. Secondly, the article discusses the degree to which communications by local candidates are different and how these interact with national party communications. The findings show that national party communications tend to support the second-order election model, while communications by local candidates appear to place greater emphasis on the European dimension and its practical consequences for citizens.