Winning, Losing, and the Quality of Democracy

Citizens who voted for a party that won the election are more satisfied with democracy than those did not. This winner–loser gap has recently been found to vary quality of electoral democracy: higher democracy, smaller gap. However, we do not know what drives this relationship. Is it driven by losers, winners, or both? And Why? Linking our work literature on motivated reasoning and macro salience benefiting from Comparative Study Electoral Systems project—covering 163 elections in 51 countries between 1996 2018, results show narrower well-established democracies is only result losers being but also winners less their victory. Our findings carry important implications since narrow appears as key feature healthy democratic systems.