When You Win, Nothing Hurts: The Durability of Electoral Salience on Individuals’ Satisfaction with Democracy
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| Author | Matthew Loveless |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720910356 |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720910356
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(3) 538 –558
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720910356
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When You Win, Nothing
Hurts: The Durability
of Electoral Salience on
Individuals’ Satisfaction
with Democracy
Matthew Loveless
Abstract
There is a substantial literature on the impact of having voting for an electorally victorious party
on individual voters’ satisfaction with democracy. Yet, there have been few evaluations as to
temporally salient are elections to the satisfaction levels for those who voted for a “winning” party
and those who voted for a “losing” party. Using rounds 1–8 of the European Social Surveys, I find
evidence from 92 elections in 27 European countries that both the levels of and the difference
between satisfaction levels of “winners” and “losers” do not attenuate quickly but rather last
almost 5 years. That is, it appears that “winners” are more satisfied with democracy and stay that
way. While this confirms earlier, smaller studies, the absence of a causal connection between the
time from election and satisfaction levels poses a significant challenge to the current literature
about the electoral mechanism of this relationship.
Keywords
satisfaction with democracy, winning and losing, democratic legitimacy, European Union
Accepted: 2 February 2020
Introduction
Citizens may respond to the outcome of a national election with feelings of euphoria or
sadness predicated largely on whether their preferred party won or not. Such feelings may
extend to the electoral process itself. These responses to electoral outcomes are prominent
in the literature on individuals’ satisfaction with democracy. This literature consistently
finds that citizens who voted for the winning party in the last election—commonly
referred to as “winners” in the literature—report higher levels of satisfaction with national
democracy than those who voted for a party that did not enter the governing
coalition—commonly, if unpleasantly, referred to as “losers.” And while a great deal of
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Corresponding author:
Matthew Loveless, University of Bologna, Palazzo Ercolani, Str. Maggiore 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy.
Email: m2loveless@gmail.com
910356PSX0010.1177/0032321720910356Political StudiesLoveless
research-article2020
Article
Loveless 539
attention has been given to potential mechanisms linking electoral outcomes to individu-
als’ satisfaction with democracy, the duration of the electoral effect on satisfaction has
thus far escaped broad international investigation.
To test the duration of this effect, I identified “winners” and “losers” for each election
using the European Social Survey (ESS; Rounds 1–8) to produce 161,489 individual
observations following 92 elections in 27 European countries over the period of 2002–
2017.1 Exploiting the survey completion dates available in these data, I precisely measure
the time elapsed between previous elections and respondents’ satisfaction levels and thus
estimate the duration of electoral salience on voters’ satisfaction levels. I find that both
the levels of and the difference between satisfaction levels of “winners” and “losers” do
not attenuate quickly but rather last almost 5 years (more than 1750 days). While these
findings serve to confirm the previously observed durability of this difference in satisfac-
tion (see Dahlberg and Linde, 2017), I further exploit the “as if” random interview dates
as a causal identification strategy to show that time does not causally affect levels of
satisfaction with democracy for winners (and losers) after an election.
The finding that winners’ (and losers’) levels of satisfaction, and the gap between
them, are quite durable is a challenge to the literature. In particular, this suggests that vot-
ers’ satisfaction levels are less responsive to electoral outcomes than previously assumed.
If electoral outcomes are not the primary origin of satisfaction in the post-election period,
having voted for a winning (or losing) party may just be a smaller part of a larger, unex-
amined link between individuals’ satisfaction with democracy and elections. In search of
potential solutions, I draw from existing work to propose two directions in which theory
may seek to improve our conceptualization of the relationship between individuals’ atti-
tudinal responses to electoral outcomes. The first is to place “winning” in the larger politi-
cal experience of voters. The second is to take more seriously the experience of losing, in
particular, the experience of serial losing.
The Satisfaction Gap: Winners and Losers
We know that a potent source of individuals’ satisfaction with democracy has been theo-
rized to originate directly from a primary activity of democracy, elections. The literature
on the determinants of citizens’ democratic satisfaction is substantial and includes the
extent individuals are supporters of the winners or losers of recent elections (Blais and
Gélineau, 2007; Singh et al., 2012; Van der Meer and Steenvoorden, 2018). The founda-
tional article for this literature demonstrated that, in Western Europe, winners of demo-
cratic competition show higher levels of satisfaction than do those in the losing minority
(Anderson and Guillory, 1997). Works building on this tradition have searched for medi-
ating effects at the individual level and have found that, for example, the intensity of
winning—in which “optimal victory winners” derive greater enjoyment as first prefer-
ence party choice (vs strategic voting)—increases this impact of victory on satisfaction
(Singh, 2014). Among losers, previous experience of victory attenuated dissatisfaction
with democracy and ideological proximity to the current government increased political
support (“quasi-winners,” Curini et al., 2012; Kim, 2009; Mayne and Hakhverdian,
2017). While these works have sought to identify potential mechanisms of the relation-
ship between electoral choices in the previous election and satisfaction levels, investiga-
tions into the how long this “winning” effect lasts are sparse.
Previous work has identified gaps in satisfaction over time, yet do not explicitly theo-
rize on the dynamic elements of such observations. Anderson et al. (2005) identify a
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