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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
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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

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