How to be Gracious about Political Loss—The Importance of Good Loser Messages in Policy Controversies

Abstract

Accepting defeat in political decision-making is crucial for the health of democracies. At the same time, being a good loser is challenging. How can citizens be motivated to be gracious about various types of political loss? In this paper, we study whether political leaders can play an important role in boosting the perceived quality of decision-making processes among losers in policy conflicts. We propose and test the impact of a simple intervention post-decision: good loser messages delivered by co-partisan leaders that remind citizens about the rules of the game. Three survey experiments on probability samples of the Norwegian and Swedish population (total n = 4700) show that good loser messages can indeed boost the process evaluations of policy losers. These findings emphasize the potential of procedural messaging to build loser’s consent between elections.

Differentiating the sources of post‐election partisan affect warming

“…Since virtually all Western democracies outside of the United States are characterized by multi-party systems, it is crucial that scholars pay closer attention to the ways in which multi-party competition and cooperation shape partisan resentment (Drutman, 2020;McCoy & Somer, 2019). Our findings should also motivate more work on how perceptions of winning and losing in elections are formed in multi-party systems and their implications for polarization, democratic well-being, and trust in government (Blais & Gélineau, 2007;Esaiasson et al, 2023;Gattermann et al, 2022;Hansen et al, 2019;Singh et al, 2012).…”

Unsuccessful candidates are more concerned about electoral fairness than election winners

“…There is rich evidence that politicians have a strong influence on citizens' political views [31,32,33], including the interpretation of election results. Recent research shows that 'good loser' messages reminding voters of the fact that losing is part of democracy can stimulate losers' perceived fairness of the decision-making process [8,34]. In turn, if candidates exhibit dissatisfaction and concern, they are very likely to influence citizens in the same direction [7].…”

“…Elections determine who holds power and who is in opposition, resulting in winners and losers, and the survival of democratic government requires the consent of the losers [1,2]. While there is rich evidence of voters' reactions to electoral defeat [3,4,5,6,7,8], we know very little about how losing affects candidates. Recent elections in the USA and Brazil provide anecdotal evidence that losing candidates may not concede the election, question the fairness of the election, and blame the election administration and media.…”

“…Our findings have important implications as they show that elections can lead to increased discontent with democracy among the people who are supposed to be strong supporters of democratic decision-making. This paradoxical finding carries great weight for citizens' perceptions of the legitimacy of elections because politicians can affect how citizens interpret election results [7,8]. If losing candidates exhibit their frustrations and concerns openly, this might undermine the legitimacy of elections in general.…”