In this project, we aim to study how public attitudes affect voting behaviour. More specifically, our analysis systematically sets out to investigate the following questions: Does a link exist between parties and their voters regarding sustainability? Do sustainability issues play a significant role in the voting preferences of citizens in the elections? First, this is done by analysing if citizens' votes for a given party increase when they are positioned closer to each other on issues pertaining to sustainability. Second, we are interested in understanding if the salience parties assign to sustainability issues moderates the effects of the positional distance on voting. Third, we compare the relative impact of sustainability issues on voting to other issue divides. Fourth, we break-down the analysis on sustainability into different dimensions (i.e. economic viability, environmental protection, social equity) and assess their individual effects on voting. Fifth, we examine how citizens perceive the role of the EU in managing some of the major challenges to sustainability, and the conditions under which they would be ready to support greater EU integration especially in those areas more subject to the authority of the member states.The analysis is conducted on the EU27 countries and makes use of a mix of large-scale data from various sources, including individual-level and party-level data.

The candidate will need to have a basic understanding of probability and inferential statistics for the social sciences and should be ready to work with heterogeneous data and various modelling techniques (appropriate training will be provided). No other language than English is required.

This project can rely on the supervision of a full professor of Political Science (Nicolò Conti) and of an assistant professor of Political Science (Luca Carrieri) established at the host istitution (Unitelma Sapienza University) who are very experienced in research on public opinion, parties and political behaviour. This will not only guarantee specialised superivison, it will also allow socialisation of the Phd candidate to the relevant international research networks.