Electoral integrity matters: how electoral process conditions the relationship between political losing and political trust

Abstract

This contribution adds a new perspective to the debate on electoral integrity by asking how electoral integrity affects the way in which election results translate into citizen attitudes towards the political system. It introduces a causal mechanism that links political losing to political trust via evaluations of electoral fairness: citizens who voted for the losing camp are more likely to view the electoral process as unfair than citizens who voted for the winning camp, resulting in political distrust. It further suggests that the effects of political losing on political trust depend on the level of electoral integrity. In conditions where the elections were conducted in a free and fair manner, even those who voted for the losing camp have little reason to suspect foul play and therefore political losing should barely affect perceptions of the electoral process. Whenever there are actual indications of electoral malpractice, however, political losers have much more reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process than those who are content with the outcome of the election. The contribution makes use of a unique dataset that ex-post harmonizes survey data from three cross-national survey projects (Asian Barometer Survey, European Social Survey, Latinobarómetro) and macro-level data from the Varieties-of-Democracy Project to cover 45 democracies in Europe, East Asia, and Latin America. Using multi-level modeling, it finds that political losing indeed decreases political trust indirectly via perceptions of electoral fairness. Confirming its key proposition, the empirical analysis shows that political losing has a weaker effect on political trust in countries where electoral integrity is high.

Public Distrust in Disputed Elections: Evidence from Latin America

“…An additional test splits our sample into elections with high and low levels of electoral integrity (see Table A5 in the Online Appendix). While the results remain significant for both subsamples, the magnitudes of the coefficients for Vote loser and Result rejection are larger among elections with low levels of electoral integrity, confirming the moderating effects of electoral integrity on electoral trust (Maldonado and Seligson 2014;Mauk 2020). In other words, voters assign more credibility to candidates' rejection of election results in contexts where violations of electoral integrity are feasible.…”

“…Additionally, voters for a losing candidate build a negative assessment of the integrity of the process to relieve the cognitive dissonance associated with facing an electoral defeat despite supporting the “best” candidate (Daniller and Mutz 2019). A growing body of literature has also offered rich nuances about the effect of the “winner/loser” status on trust in elections, for instance, the gap in electoral trust between winners and losers is moderated when voters perceive higher levels of electoral integrity (Maldonado and Seligson 2014; Mauk 2020) or when a non-partisan entity certifies that elections were well conducted (Kernell and Mullinix 2019). Furthermore, there is evidence of heterogeneous effects of partisanship among losers (Cantú and García-Ponce 2015).…”

Response scale overstretch: linear stretching of response scales does not ensure cross-project equivalence in harmonised data

“…Regarding response scale characteristics, harmonisation projects usually provide ready access to information on the length of response scales alongside other Fig. 3 Moderating effect of the project on the association between the share of DK and EP trust characteristics of the underlying questionnaire items (Kołczyńska and Slomczynski 2018;Mauk 2020). These typically include methodological controls for harmonised variables, such as the presenting response option in an ascending or descending order, the number of source items used to create the target variable, the between-project differences in question-item conceptualisations, and the quality of survey documentation (Slomczynski and Tomescu-Dubrow 2018;Granda et al 2010).…”

Living in Different Worlds: Electoral Authoritarianism and Partisan Gaps in Perceptions of Electoral Integrity

“…Recent research on electoral integrity in democratic regimes demonstrates that this gap also exists with regard to perceptions of electoral integrity, where supporters of the winning political camp perceive the quality of a given electoral contest as higher than supporters of the losing camp (Beaulieu, 2014;Cantú and García-Ponce, 2015;Daniller and Mutz, 2019;Marien and Kern, 2018). This differential is concerning from a political legitimacy perspective, as doubts about the free and fair conduct of elections not only decrease perceptions of electoral integrity but also have the potential to undermine political trust more broadly (Mauk, 2020). Lower trust can subsequently lead to lower political support and potentially undermine the legitimacy of the political system per se.…”

“…1 But the few studies focusing on electoral authoritarian systems are in stark contrast to the rich literature focusing on citizens' perceptions of electoral integrity in democratic settings (Beaulieu, 2014;Daniller and Mutz, 2019;Sinclair, Smith, and Tucker, 2018). Even though the quality of elections may vary across democratic systems (Mauk, 2020), given the systematic biases in electoral contests, the public's view of the meaningfulness of elections may differ considerably between democratic and electoral authoritarian systems. This paper thus seeks to advance our knowledge about perceived electoral integrity in electoral autocracies by investigating how incumbent and opposition supporters perceive electoral integrity under authoritarianism.…”