The nationalization of politics is a hotly debated issue in electoral studies. In this on-going debate, the question of the nationalization (or the lack thereof) of local elections had stayed until recently somewhat apart because of the specific nature of this level of government. Local lists remain indeed a distinctive feature of local politics in most European countries. In the seminal volume, Farewell to the Party Model? (Reiser and Holtmann, 2008), comparing twelve East and West European countries, Reiser (2008) concludes that empirical evidence is strong to claim the persistence of local lists. They have been a distinctive feature of local politics – albeit with some cross-time variation – in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and West Germany over the last two decades. Nevertheless, back in the 1960’s, Rokkan (1966, 251) already discussed the nationalization of local politics as an incremental process until “full nationalization of politicsâ€. Yet far from declining under a process of modernization, local lists have even been growing in importance in several countries (Bäck, 2003; Wille and Deschouwer, 2007; Steyvers et al., 2008; Kjaer and Elklit, 2010b; Ennser- Jedenastik and Hansen, 2013) and recent scholarship has shown there is an interest in voters’ behaviour for the local and not only against the national (Marien et al., 2015).