Considerations of American Democracy, Feeling Like a Loser, and Support for Changing the Rules

Abstract

We test how perceptions of feeling like a loser in American politics may condition support for changes to how elections are conducted. We report a survey experiment that sheds some light on why people may feel like an electoral loser, then use this measure of losing to predict support for a range of proposals to change elections. The experiment prompted people to consider if they were satisfied with how democracy works and to think about the design and structure of American government. Respondents were then asked if they felt like they were on the winning or losing ‘side’ of politics. The prompt was associated with higher rates of respondents reporting they felt like they were on the losing side. Non-experimental estimates of support for a range of proposed changes to elections find a substantial relationship between this form of feeling like a loser, and supporting changing how elections are conducted. This relationship holds with controls for partisanship and other factors. One implication of this is that the more that some Americans are prompted to think about their government and democracy, the more likely they support changing how it works.

Public opinion on reforming U.S. primaries

“…These are common findings in TABLE 4 Predictors of support for primary election reforms (odds ratios-greater than 1 positive relationship and below 1 negative). models of public opinion on many policies; for instance, they are consistent with research about the lack of demographic differences in understanding election laws (Donovan, Tolbert, and Harper 2023). Across the board, younger people are more favorable toward reforms to primary elections, except for optional primaries.…”

“…Recent research using survey experiments seeks to address this concern by varying the informational context when people answer questions about election reform proposals (Donovan, Tolbert, and Harper 2023). The authors use experiments to prompt people to consider whether they are satisfied with how democracy works and to think about the structure of the American government.…”