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Winners and losers reconsidered: party support, character valence, and satisfaction with democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2019

Debra Leiter ,
April K. Clark  and
Michael Clark
Debra Leiter*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri
April K. Clark
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois
Michael Clark
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois
*
*E-mail: leiterd@umkc.edu
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Abstract

Studies of citizens’ satisfaction with democracy have established a connection between satisfaction and how well those citizens’ preferred parties perform in elections. Yet, the question remains whether ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ respond to the same system- and party-level factors when evaluating their political satisfaction. We build on extant literature to consider citizen satisfaction with democracy from the perspective of character valence. Using the Mannheim Eurobarometer trend file and content analysis-based data on parties’ character valence, we find that both winners’ and losers’ satisfaction with the political system is affected by parties’ character valence, but in differing (and somewhat surprising) ways. We find that winners respond to improvements in the character valence of opposition parties, whereas losers demonstrate greater concern with the valence of governing parties.

Keywords

valencesatisfaction with democracywinners and losers
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 285 - 300
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2019 

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Footnotes

†

An earlier version of this paper was prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the European Consortium on Political Research, 3–6 September 2014, University of Glasgow, Scotland.

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