second-order election is a term that appeared for the first time in karlheinz reif and hermann schmitt's "nine second-order national elections – a conceptual framework for the analysis of european election results" article for the [european journal of political research, in 1980]. it was used to analyze the first european parliament elections, held in 1979 in the, then, nine member states of the european economic community. according to the "second-order elections" approach, european parliament elections were "second-order" in that they were viewed as less important by voters, parties and the media than first-order elections.