In this seminar, Alejandro Tirado Castro will present the paper "The Winner-Loser Gap on Polarized Elections in the European Union."
Elections are at the core of democracy. From a normative perspective, it is necessary that citizens widely accept the results of elections and give legitimacy to these democratic processes. However, recent events, such as the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol after Trump’s rally in early January 2021, have shown how high levels of ideological polarization can influence perceptions of election outcomes, especially on the losing side.
The winner-loser gap literature, started by Anderson (2005), suggests that the way people perceive democracy is significantly influenced by electoral outcomes and each person’s status as a winner or loser of an election. For instance, losers of polarized elections might believe that democracy is "crocked" or that "elections have been stolen" if the election results do not match their political preferences. Similarly, recent articles have found that higher polarization is negatively correlated with satisfaction with democracy. Thus, the main contribution of this article is to examine the potential interaction between ideological polarization and the winner-loser gap. Counter-intuitively, the findings show that the winner-loser gap narrows after highly polarized elections since satisfaction with democracy declines sharply among winners rather than losers. Not only does the effect of ideological polarization affect perceptions of democracy a few months after electoral day, the results also demonstrate that this outcome is robust over time. The article also attempts to comprehend the explanatory mechanism behind this phenomenon, pointing to the stigmatization and demonisation of political opponents as one of the main driving forces that weaken the democratic principle of mutual tolerance and, thus, democratic satisfaction.
Due to limited spaces for COVID restrictions, participation on site will be allowed on a first-come, first-served basis. The speaker will present in person, the talk will be live-streamed and participants will receive the zoom link once registered.