Euroscepticism and the use of negative, uncivil and emotional campaigns in the 2019 European Parliament election: A winning combination Alessandro Nai Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Mike Medeiros Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Michaela Maier Department of Communication Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany Jürgen Maier Department of Political Science, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany Abstract Are Eurosceptic parties more likely to run negative, uncivil and emotional campaigns, as it is often intuitively argued? And with what consequences? In this article, we shed light on the effectiveness of these campaign strategies for Eurosceptic parties during the 2019 European elections. We argue that ‘harsher’ campaigns are ‘in character’ for Eurosceptic parties, and are as such more likely to be electorally successful for them. We use data from the 2019 European Parliament Elections Expert Survey, covering 191 unique Corresponding author: Alessandro Nai, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Email: a.nai@uva.nl Regular Research Article European Union Politics 1–22 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/14651165211035675 journals.sagepub.com/home/eup