Abstract
AbstractThe expectation that voters behave rationally has been challenged through studies suggesting that “irrelevant events” like natural disasters and sports results change voting behavior. We test the effect of irrelevant events by matching candidate-level election results from Irish general (1922–2020) and local elections (1942–2019) with games in the men's Gaelic football and hurling championships, the most popular sports in Ireland. Although Irish citizens care deeply about sports, we fail to find any relationship between match results and support for incumbents or politicians of government parties. These findings hold when applying an “unexpected event during survey design” to two representative surveys. Our results contribute to the literature on political accountability and point to conditional effects of irrelevant events.
Highlights
Introduction and motivationDo events irrelevant to politics, such as the results of sporting events, influence citizens’ assessments of government performance and voting behavior? The effective functioning of democracy fundamentally relies upon the ability of citizens to be considered in the development of their political opinions and in making voting decisions at election time
Our findings indicate the need to further consider how the salience of sports conditions the impact of irrelevant events on political opinions, even where the existing literature would predict a strong likelihood of such effects
We assessed whether irrelevant events change political opinions and voting behavior
Summary
Et al.’s study on sports games and incumbency support “could describe the reality of democracies as being closer to the worst-case view.”. The close affiliation between players and the community, and the deeply embedded geographic nature of Gaelic games strongly enhance Irish citizens’ identification with their local team These ties between supporters and their local team are at least as strong as those between fans and both professional and NCAA football and basketball teams in the United States that the literature has previously examined (SI Section A). Irish citizens’ opinions’ and voting behavior appear unaffected by irrelevant events such as the outcome of sports matches We contend that this could be due to strong levels of political knowledge, and close relationships between voters and local politicians that help voters make their choices without relying on mood. The results underline the importance of employing designs best suited to approximating causal effects to test for the generalizability and robustness of surprising findings in other contexts
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