Losers’ Dissent. How Election Results shape Populists’ Satisfaction with Democracy

If elections are fair and free, citizens should accept their results regardless of the party or candidate they voted for. The evaluation of democracy should not be tainted by “winning” or “losing” an election. However, research on “losers’ consent” has demonstrated that winners evaluate the functioning of democracy more positively than losers. We argue that the effect of losing is even more pronounced for populist voters. They see politics as a struggle between friend and foe. For them, winning and losing is indicative of the functioning of the democratic system itself. To demonstrate this, we use cross-sectional data from the Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems as well as panel data from Germany and the Netherlands for longitudinal analysis. The more populist a citizen is, the stronger the effect losing is on the level of satisfaction with democracy.