Are elite cues necessary to drive the “Winner Effect” on trust in elections?

Abstract

A rigorous literature analyzing elections in the United States, in established European democracies, and in the newer democracies of Eastern Europe and Latin America have shown that voters on the losing side of a campaign exhibit less trust in elections and faith in democratic legitimacy. Those who experience the “winner effect,” by contrast, report greater system support and belief in the integrity of the election. What drives this effect? Is it the election result itself that leads to a direct change in mass opinion or is it the elite messages – including charges of voter fraud – that often follow a contest? To disentangle the impact of mass mood from leadership cues as the mechanisms behind the winner effect, we use a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design in a recent American election in which the leading candidate on the losing side did not claim to have lost because of vote fraud. We gathered parallel survey samples in the two days leading up to the polls closing and then the following two days once the definitive results became clear. Even in the absence of elite claims of vote fraud, we see strong and immediate shifts in mass views. Once the results became clear, those who supported the losing side became significantly less likely to trust that votes were counted correctly or to be satisfied with the election process, while trust and support for the process rose from pre-to post-election for voters on the winning side. We contribute to this literature by demonstrating that elite cues are not a necessary condition to drive the winner effect; it can be generated by mass attitudinal shifts that follow from the revelation of an election result alone.