Abstract
Contrary to the expectations of many, Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The initial shock to her supporters turned into despair for most, but not everyone was affected equally. We draw from the literature on political activism, identity, and self-other overlap in predicting that not all Clinton voters would be equivalently crushed by her loss. Specifically, we hypothesize that pre-election measures of political activism, and level of self-other identification between participants and Clinton–that is, how much a person was “with her”–will interact to predict the level of distress of Clinton voters two months later. Longitudinal data support our hypothesis. Notably, among Clinton voters, greater activism negatively predicted depressive symptoms, and positively predicted sleep quality, but only when participants were highly identified with Clinton. We discuss the implications of the results for theory and research on social action and well-being.
Highlights
The 2016 U.S presidential election was among the most contentious in U.S history [1]
Because the main effect of activism was not significant in both models, it was inferred that ICS reversed the effect of activism on well-being, making activism potentially beneficial for people high in ICS but detrimental for those low in ICS
Low ICS, on the other hand, made activism non- to negatively related with Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CESD)
Summary
The 2016 U.S presidential election was among the most contentious in U.S history [1]. Political activists of all stripes pulled out all the stops to get their candidate elected, with billions of dollars spent on advertising, and local activists volunteering to make phone calls on behalf of their candidates, even taking on watchdog positions of citizen poll-watchers to ensure a fair election [2, 3]. The two main sides–those in favor of Republican candidate and President Donald Trump and those in favor of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton–framed this as a “last chance”. For Republicans, Trump represented the last person standing between them and another Obama-like administration. For Democrats, Clinton may have stated the case most clearly when she said to a newspaper reporter, “I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse” [4]
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