Evidence for the irrelevance of irrelevant events

Müller, Stefan; Kneafsey, Liam

doi:10.1017/psrm.2021.52

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Although our findings question the positive impact of irrelevant events on democratic politics (also Fowler andMontagnes, 2015, 2022;Fowler and Hall, 2018;Müller and Kneafsey, 2021), we conclude by repeating the call for more context-specific evidence sounded by Busby and Druckman (2018). While some scholars question whether looking for political effects of non-political events is a meaningful exercise, there is still room for more contextual variety in the analyses before the idea should be dismissed.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…This gives us confidence to claim that our data captures real-life effects on government support, but that sports success is not among them. We join Müller and Kneafsey (2021), who report null findings in a similar "best case" scenario from Ireland, which also has coalition governments where assigning government responsibility can be difficult for voters. So where does this leave us regarding voter (ir)rationality?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most importantly, Finland presents a scenario where such a linkage, if it exists, could be genuine and not spurious (cf. Müller and Kneafsey, 2021). In this sense, Finland can be seen as a likely case.…”

Section: Linking Sports Success and Government Supportmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does sports success increase government support? Voter (ir)rationality in a multiparty context

Rapeli

Söderlund

2022

Research & Politics

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A growing number of studies discuss the impact of non-political factors on the political success of incumbents. Theoretically, this literature addresses core ideas about electoral accountability and voter rationality. Scholars have explored factors such as shark attacks, weather, natural disasters, and sports results. So far, the evidence has been inconclusive and almost exclusively from majoritarian contexts, where government accountability is easy for voters to assign. We contribute with an analysis of whether nationally important sports success, such as Olympic gold medals, affect support for coalition governments in a multiparty context. We use monthly polling from Finland for a 28-year period from Jan 1994 to Dec 2021, which we combine with data on sports success. Our analysis shows that nationally important sports success has no impact on government popularity. The finding holds while controlling for traditional drivers of government popularity and across different operationalizations of government support and sports success. With this finding, the study joins several previous analyses, which have been supportive of voter rationality.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does sports success increase government support? Voter (ir)rationality in a multiparty context

Rapeli

Söderlund

2022

Research & Politics

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“…4 Following previous studies, we treat first-preference vote choice as a sincere expression of party support (e.g. Benoit & Marsh, 2008;Müller & Kneafsey, 2021). We include the same control variables as in Table 1 and apply survey weights.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Irish voters moving to the left?

Müller

Regan

2021

Irish Political Studies

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The Irish party system has been an outlier in comparative politics. Ireland never had a left-right divide in parliament, and for decades, the dominant centrist political parties competed around a centre-right policy agenda. The absence of an explicit left-right divide in party competition suggested that Irish voters, on average, occupy centre-right policy preferences. Combining survey data since 1973 and all Irish election studies between 2002 and 2020, we show that the average Irish voter now leans to the centre-left. We also show that income has recently emerged as a predictor of left-right self-placement, and that left-right positions increasingly structure vote choice. These patterns hold when using policy preferences on taxes, spending, and government interventions to reduce inequality as alternative indicators. We outline potential explanations for this leftward shift, and conclude that these developments might be anchored in economic inequalities and the left populist strategies of Sinn Féin.

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“…sightings (Kitamura 2022) are shown to influence elections and public opinion in the U.S., though the validity of the evidence is debated (Achen and Bartels 2018;Busby and Druckman 2018;Fowler and Hall 2016;Fowler and Montagnes 2015;Healy, Malhotra, and Mo 2015). Recent studies have extended the analyses, especially those about sports events, to different times (Graham et al 2023b) and different countries such as Finland (Rapeli and Söderlund 2022), Ireland (Müller and Kneafsey 2023), and Spain (Alfano and Ercolano 2023), while the results remain mixed Montagnes 2023b, 2023a;Graham et al 2023a). Despite the extensive analyses, however, the literature is still confined to the U.S. and a few developed countries, neglecting the generalizability across countries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Evidence for the Relevance of Irrelevant Events: International Soccer Games and Leader Approval

Kikuta,

Ono

2024

Preprint

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Despite the intense debate over whether politically irrelevant events (e.g., football games) influence voters, existing literature predominantly focuses on the U.S. and a few developed countries, neglecting generalizability and heterogeneity across countries. Our study provides the first global evidence for the relevance of irrelevant events, analyzing the effects of international soccer games on leader approval in more than 100 countries (2008–2023). Leveraging “double” natural experiments, comprising as-if random assignments of interview dates and soccer results conditional on betting odds, we find that lucky victories enhanced public opinion about leaders by 7 percentage points, while unlucky losses lacked compensating effects. The analysis of causal mechanisms suggests that soccer games served as a benchmark of leader performance. Notably, these effects exhibit substantial cross-country variation, prompting us to consider contextual conditions across countries.

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Evidence for the irrelevance of irrelevant events

Cited by 10 publications

References 44 publications

Does sports success increase government support? Voter (ir)rationality in a multiparty context

Does sports success increase government support? Voter (ir)rationality in a multiparty context

Are Irish voters moving to the left?

Global Evidence for the Relevance of Irrelevant Events: International Soccer Games and Leader Approval

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