Winning and Losing Democratic Elections: Effects on Political and Social Attitudes and Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

In democracies, losing free and fair elections is a normal part of politics, and the consent of losers is needed for the survival of democratic government itself. But being on the losing side of the electoral contest can trigger important changes in the political and social attitudes, and even in the life outlook and subjective well-being of citizens. Based on individual-level survey data from 25 European countries and two time periods (2012 and 2018), we show that there is a significant gap between people who have voted for the parties in government and the losers of democratic elections when it comes to a wide set of political attitudes, including political trust, perceived efficacy and importance of government responsiveness and perceptions about how politics and government work. We also find that the gap between winners and losers extends to social trust, country attachment, feeling happy, healthy, safe, and optimistic, life satisfaction and perceived place in society. Most of these effects are greater in new democracies and for citizens with strong partisan attachments, some are bigger for men, and many are mediated by satisfaction with the government. Losing elections is hard for politics, but it could also be hard for the soul.

The winner-loser satisfaction gap in the absence of a clear outcome

“…Although, in a sense, the winner-loser gap is primarily a micro-phenomenon that affects both sides of political spectrums in different electoral cycles (Banducci and Karp 2003), it has far-reaching temporary-and possibly more enduring-consequences in democratic regimes. In a crossnational extension, Toshkov and Mazepus (2020) find that the effects of the gap go beyond mere political support and include general attitudes such as life satisfaction and feelings such as happiness and optimism about the future. The mechanisms undergirding this satisfaction gap include instrumental motives such as policy congruence (Curini et al, 2012;Ferland 2020;Gärtner et al, 2020), affective ones such as the emotional benefits of victory (Thaler 1994;Anderson et al, 2005), or psychological ones such as the need to avoid cognitive dissonance that follows the undesirable outcome emerging from the election (Singh 2014).…”