Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T12:11:05.299Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Effect of Electoral Inversions on Democratic Legitimacy: Evidence from the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2021

John M. Carey Open the ORCID record for John M. Carey [Opens in a new window] ,
Gretchen Helmke ,
Brendan Nyhan Open the ORCID record for Brendan Nyhan [Opens in a new window] ,
Mitchell Sanders ,
Susan C. Stokes  and
Shun Yamaya Open the ORCID record for Shun Yamaya [Opens in a new window]
John M. Carey*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
Gretchen Helmke
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
Brendan Nyhan
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
Mitchell Sanders
Affiliation:
Meliora Research, Brighton, NY, USA
Susan C. Stokes
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Shun Yamaya
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: john.m.carey@dartmouth.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When a party or candidate loses the popular vote but still wins the election, do voters view the winner as legitimate? This scenario, known as an electoral inversion, describes the winners of two of the last six presidential elections in the United States. We report results from two experiments testing the effect of inversions on democratic legitimacy in the US context. Our results indicate that inversions significantly decrease the perceived legitimacy of winning candidates. Strikingly, this effect does not vary with the margin by which the winner loses the popular vote, nor by whether the candidate benefiting from the inversion is a co-partisan. The effect is driven by Democrats, who punish inversions regardless of candidate partisanship; few effects are observed among Republicans. These results suggest that the experience of inversions increases sensitivity to such outcomes among supporters of the losing party.

Keywords

ElectionsElectoral Collegelegitimacypartisanshipinversions
Type
Letter
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 1891 - 1901
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, AI and Webster, S (2016) The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of US elections in the 21st century. Electoral Studies 41, 12–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, CJ and Guillory, CA (1997) Political institutions and satisfaction with democracy: a cross-national analysis of consensus and majoritarian systems. American Political Science Review 91(1), 66–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bright Line Watch (2020) A Democratic Stress Test—The 2020 Election and Its Aftermath. Available from http://brightlinewatch.org/a-democratic-stress-test-the-2020-election-and-its-aftermathbright-line-watch-november-2020-survey/Google Scholar
Bright Line Watch (2021a) Surveys. Available from http://brightlinewatch.org/survey-data-and-replication-material/Google Scholar
Carey, JM et al. (2019) Searching for bright lines in the Trump presidency. Perspectives on Politics 17(3), 699–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, JM et al. (2021) Replication Data for: The Effect of Electoral Inversions on Democratic Legitimacy: Evidence from the United States. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YZZFTK, Harvard Dataverse, V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, R (2020) Japanese Democracy and Lessons for the United States: Eight Counterintuitive Lessons. Routledge: Oxfordshire, England.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CNN (2000) Poll: Majority of Americans Accept Bush as Legitimate President. December 13. Available from https://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/13/cnn.poll/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Craig, SC et al. (2006) Winners, losers, and election context: voter responses to the 2000 presidential election. Political Research Quarterly 59(4), 579–592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, RA (2008) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Drutman, L (2020) Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gehlbach, S and Simpser, A (2015) Electoral manipulation as bureaucratic control. American Journal of Political Science 59(1), 212–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geruso, M, Spears, D, and Talesara, I (2019) Inversions in US Presidential Elections: 1836–2016. Working Paper 26247, National Bureau of Economic Research. Available from http://www.nber.org/papers/w26247CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higashijima, M (2015) Do contentious elections overthrow leaders? In Norris P, Frank RW and Martinez i Coma F Contentious Elections: From Ballots to Barricades. London: Routledge, pp. 64–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, JM (2016) In U.S., 84% Accept Trump as Legitimate President. Gallup, November 11. Available from https://news.gallup.com/poll/197441/accept-trump-legitimate-president.aspxGoogle Scholar
Kaniovski, S and Zaigraev, A (2018) The probability of majority inversion in a two-stage voting system with three states. Theory and Decision 84(4), 525–546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kikuchi, K (2016) The likelihood of majority inversion in an indirect voting system. Available from SSRN 2785971. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2785971CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, M (2020) Winning cures everything? Beliefs about voter fraud, voter confidence, and the 2016 election. Electoral Studies, 102156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2020.102156Google Scholar
May, K (1948) Probabilities of certain election results. The American Mathematical Monthly 55(4), 203–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadeau, R and Blais, A (1993) Accepting the election outcome: the effect of participation on losers’ consent. British Journal of Political Science 23(4), 553–563.Google Scholar
Organization of American States (2017) Segundo informe preliminario de la mision de observacion electoral en Honduras. Available from http://www.oas.org/fpdb/press/Segundo-Informe-Preliminar-MOE-Honduras-18dic-FINAL.pdfGoogle Scholar
Rundlett, A and Svolik, M (2016) Deliver the vote! Micromotives and macrobehavior in electoral fraud. American Political Science Review 110(1), 180–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sances, MW and Stewart, C (2015) Partisanship and confidence in the vote count: evidence from U.S. national elections since 2000. Electoral Studies 40, 176–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, B, Smith, SS and Tucker, PD (2018) “It's largely a rigged system”: voter confidence and the winner effect in 2016. Political Research Quarterly 71(4), 854–868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skelley, G (2021) Even Though Biden Won, Republicans Enjoyed the Largest Electoral College Edge in 70 Years. Will That Last? FiveThirtyEight, January 19. Available from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-though-biden-won-republicans-enjoyed-the-largest-electoral-college-edge-in-70-years-will-that-last/Google Scholar
Stewart, C III (2019) A Voter's Eye View of Elections, 2008–2016. Unpublished manuscript. Available from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3361952Google Scholar
The Economist (2020) Forecasting the US Elections. September 5, 2020. Downloaded September 27, 2021 from https://web.archive.org/web/20200905064713/https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president.Google Scholar
Vickery, C, Ennis, D, Ellena, K and Kaiser, A (2018) When Are Elections Good Enough? Validating or Annulling Election Results. International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Available from https://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/2018_ifes_when_are_elections_good_enough_final.pdfGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Carey et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YZZFTK
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Carey et al. supplementary material

Carey et al. supplementary material

Download Carey et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 909.9 KB