Electoral Chair’s Seminar – 4 December

Do Emotions Drive the Link Between Winning and Satisfaction with Democracy? Leveraging the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and The Lion King

Patrick Fournier-Université de Montréal

Electoral winners are more satisfied with democracy than losers, but there is debate over whether this is due to emotions or policy considerations. We leverage the fact that the emotions engendered by victory and loss in sporting events concord with those provoked by winning and losing elections. In two quasi-experiments, we exploit the outcomes of major football games, which exogenously separated people into winning and losing groups. As the games have no bearing on governmental policy, any detected effects of victory and loss on satisfaction would be attributable to emotions. We validate the initial studies with an experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to view emotion-inducing excerpts from The Lion King. Our findings indicate that emotions play no role in the post-election gap in satisfaction with democracy between winners and losers. The gap is instead likely to be grounded in evaluations of policy.

This content has been updated on 2 December 2024 at 10 h 02 min.