The results of this election have been surprising in many ways. For example, the Democratic party suffered a major defeat in the House, while Donald Trump has a much bigger majority than expected in the Senate. The scope of the Democrats’ losses should result in recriminations and soul-searching within their ranks.
What is more, this election has highlighted deep divisions in American society. Many voters were willing to embrace a leader that promised transformative change even though it would challenge established constitutional law and democratic norms. Moreover, these voters tended to favor political rhetoric that focused on economic issues like inflation and immigration rather than traditional social issues such as racism and sexism.
Previous research has repeatedly found that electoral expectations are in great part driven by partisan biases (Delavande and Manski 2012; Dolan and Holbrook 2001). Thus, it is not surprising that so many voters were surprised when their preferred candidate lost the election. This article investigates how this unexpected outcome impacted perceptions of electoral integrity and satisfaction with democracy.
To measure perceptions of electoral integrity, the ANES surveys asked respondents: “How often do you feel that in this country’s elections, votes are counted fairly?” Respondents were given four possible answer options: very often, fairly often, not at all often, or never. The left-side panel of Figure 2 displays the main results. Unexpected winners are less satisfied with democracy than expected winners, and this gap in satisfaction is larger among those who incorrectly anticipated the election outcome (i.e., losers) than those who correctly predicted the outcome (i.e., winners).