Nail-biters and no-contests: The effect of electoral margins on satisfaction with democracy in winners and losers

Howell, Patrick; Justwan, Florian

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2013.02.004

Cited by 57 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…A budding stream of research has begun to disentangle various types of winners (e.g., Curini et al. ; Howell & Justwan, forthcoming; Singh et al. ), and this article builds on this work by intricately considering the nature of the vote that winners cast.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not all election winners are equal: Satisfaction with democracy and the nature of the vote

Singh

2013

European J Political Res

101

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It is well known that individuals who voted for the winning party in an election tend to be more satisfied with democracy than those who did not. However, many winners deviate from their first choice when voting. It is argued in this article that the mechanisms that engender satisfaction operate less forcefully among such winners, thereby lessening the impact of victory on satisfaction. Results show that the gap in satisfaction over electoral losers among these ‘non‐optimal winners’ is, in fact, much smaller than that of ‘optimal winners’, who voted in line with their expressed preferences. A win matters more for those who have a bigger stake in victory. The article further explores how the effect of optimal victory on satisfaction varies across electoral systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not all election winners are equal: Satisfaction with democracy and the nature of the vote

Singh

2013

European J Political Res

101

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“…8 Studies in this tradition typically focus on either a macro or micro approach. At the macro level, research has found winner-loser gaps to be a function of differences between mature and emerging democracies, 9 between elections that were close versus those that were not close, 10 and whether analysis includes both presidential and congressional elections. 11 At the micro level, such concepts as trust in government, belief in the legitimacy of electoral outcomes, and satisfaction with democracy dominate the literature.…”

Section: Winners and Losersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Surprised Loser

Hollander

2014

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

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People tend to predict their preferred political candidate will win an election. The resulting "surprised losers" are examined as playing a role in the established gap between electoral winners and losers on such important outcomes as trust in government and satisfaction with the electoral process and democracy. Exposure to Fox News programming can increase wishful thinking among Republican candidate supporters, but among surprised losers, it does not increase negative attitudes.

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“…Moreover, as noted in the introduction, the interpretation of p affects how the other elements of the voting calculus are interpreted, and this new understanding of how individual votes contribute to election outcomes thus paves 52 For a possible confirmation of Tuck's theory, see Howell and Justwan (2013), who unexpectedly find that among those on the losing side after an election, satisfaction with the democratic system is unaffected by the electoral margin, while satisfaction among those on the winning side decreases for wider margins. This is perhaps consistent with the logic of efficacious set causation and bandwagon effects, since on the losing side, where the ex post probability of having been in the efficacious set is always zero, the margin of victory should be irrelevant, while on the winning side, where that probability is almost one for very close elections and then decreases gradually, margins of victory should matter more.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Reinterpretingp: A New Theory of How Individual Votes Contribute to Electoral Outcomes

PoupkoEliezer¹

2015

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were.-Meditation XVII, John Donne (1959 [1623])Everybody wants to rule the world.-Tears for Fears (1985) ABSTRACT In the rational choice calculus of voting, p represents the probability that an individual vote will have an instrumental effect on the outcome of an election. The well-known paradox of turnout arises from the fact that a single vote has virtually no chance of being pivotal in any large election, even when the race is extremely close. This article criticizes the conventional interpretation of p, suggesting an arguably more plausible and normatively superior alternative to pivotal voting theory. The theory of efficacious set causation, based on the work of Richard Tuck, provides an instrumentally rational justification for individuals to participate in large elections, thus resolving the long-standing paradox of turnout. The article analyzes Tuck's theory and elaborates upon it, offering a formal model of how this novel interpretation of p could be calculated in actual elections. Highlighting how institutions of election law and administration reflect basic conceptions of democratic theory, the article discusses normative and policy implications-related to the participatory and competitive schools of democracy-that follow from this new understanding of how individual votes contribute to an election outcome.

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Nail-biters and no-contests: The effect of electoral margins on satisfaction with democracy in winners and losers

Cited by 57 publications

References 28 publications

Not all election winners are equal: Satisfaction with democracy and the nature of the vote

Not all election winners are equal: Satisfaction with democracy and the nature of the vote

The Surprised Loser

Reinterpretingp: A New Theory of How Individual Votes Contribute to Electoral Outcomes

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