Article European Union Politics 2017, Vol. 18(3) 447–468 ! The Author(s) 2017 The role of candidate Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav evaluations in the 2014 DOI: 10.1177/1465116517704519 European Parliament journals.sagepub.com/home/eup elections: Towards the personalization of voting behaviour? Katjana Gattermann Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Claes H De Vreese Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract We study the personalization of voting behaviour in European Parliament elections. We argue that information from the media is crucial for providing linkages between candidates and voters. Moreover, we contend that candidates can serve as information short-cuts given the complexity of European Union politics. We use a four-wave Dutch panel survey and a media study that enable us to link evaluations of lead candidates, party preferences, and vote choice to exposure to news about these candidates. We show, firstly, that exposure to candidate news is a strong explanatory factor for candi- date recognition. Secondly, we find that candidate evaluations positively affect party choice, albeit mainly for those voters who tend to be politically aware. Our research has implications for debates about the European Union’s accountability deficit. Keywords Content analysis, European Parliament elections, media effects, personalization of pol- itics, voter survey Corresponding author: Katjana Gattermann, Department of Communication Science, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 15793, 1001 NG Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email:
[email protected] 448 European Union Politics 18(3) Introduction The European Union (EU) suffers from an accountability deficit (Hobolt and Tilley, 2014).