Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:05:28.758Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Public Distrust in Disputed Elections: Evidence from Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2021

Victor Hernández-Huerta Open the ORCID record for Victor Hernández-Huerta [Opens in a new window]  and
Francisco Cantú Open the ORCID record for Francisco Cantú [Opens in a new window]
Victor Hernández-Huerta
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico
Francisco Cantú*
Affiliation:
University of Houston, Houston, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The comparative literature on democratization has shown that election trust depends as much on subjective factors as on the objective conditions of the process. This literature, however, has thus far overlooked the consequences of candidates refusing to concede an electoral defeat. This letter argues that a disputed electoral outcome further inflames negative perceptions of electoral integrity among voters who supported a losing candidate. We bring support for this claim from a multilevel regression that includes data from the AmericasBarometer surveys on almost 100,000 respondents across 49 elections in 18 Latin American countries. We combine these responses with an original database of disputed elections in the region. The empirical findings demonstrate the eroding effect of challenged election outcomes on voters' election trust, particularly among those who voted for a losing candidate. The findings underscore an intuitive yet untested pattern: candidates' refusal to accept the electoral outcome is a strong signal among their supporters, increasing their distrust on the integrity of the process.

Keywords

electoral integrityelection trustdisputed election outcomesLatin America
Type
Letter
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 1923 - 1930
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alvarez, M, Hall, T, and Llewellyn, M (2008) Are Americans confident their ballots are counted? The Journal of Politics 70(3), 754–766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, C et al. (2005) Losers’ Consent: Elections and Democratic Legitimacy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, S and Persily, N (2008) Vote fraud in the eye of the beholder: the role of public opinion in the challenge to voter identification requirements. Harvard Law Review 121(7), 1737–1774.Google Scholar
Beaulieu, E (2014a) Electoral Protest and Democracy in the Developing World. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaulieu, E (2014b) From voter ID to party ID: how political parties affect perceptions of election fraud in the U.S. Electoral Studies 35, 24–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, S (2008) Electoral institutions and popular confidence in electoral processes: a cross-national analysis. Electoral Studies 27(2), 305–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, S (2010) Perceptions of electoral fairness and voter turnout. Comparative Political Studies 43(12), 1601–1622.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, JD and Dutton, KA (1995) The thrill of victory, the complexity of defeat: self-esteem and people's emotional reactions to success and failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68(4), 712–722.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bush, SS and Prather, L (2017) The promise and limits of election observers in building election credibility. The Journal of Politics 79(3), 921–935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cantú, F and García-Ponce, O (2015) Partisan losers’ effects: perceptions of electoral integrity in Mexico. Electoral Studies 39, 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chernykh, S (2014) When do political parties protest election results? Comparative Political Studies 47(10), 1359–1383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coppedge, M et al. (2020) V-Dem Country-Year/Country-Date Dataset v10. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniller, A and Mutz, D (2019) The dynamics of electoral integrity. A three-election panel study. Public Opinion Quarterly 83(1), 46–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daxecker, U, Di Salvatore, J, and Ruggeri, A (2019) Fraud is what people make of it: election fraud, perceived fraud, and protesting in Nigeria. Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(9), 2098–2127.Google Scholar
Frank, RW and Martínez i Coma, F (2017) How election dynamics shape perceptions of electoral integrity. Electoral Studies 48, 153–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnett, HA (2019) On the front lines of democracy: perceptions of electoral officials and democratic elections. Democratization 26(8), 1399–1418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goren, P, Federico, CM, and Kittilson, MC (2009) Source cues, partisan identities, and political value expression. American Journal of Political Science 53(4), 805–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartlyn, J, McCoy, J, and Mustillo, T (2008) Electoral governance matters: explaining the quality of elections in contemporary Latin America. Comparative Political Studies 41(1), 73–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernández-Huerta, V (2020) Disputed elections in presidential democracies: contexts of electoral “blackmail.” The Journal of Politics 82(1), 89–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernandez-Huerta, V and Cantu, F (2021) Replication Data for: Public Distrust in Challenged Elections: Evidence from Latin America, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CAFHEB, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:nAGcxglJAwbTlTMKQB+v6A== [fileUNF].Google Scholar
Hyde, SD and Marinov, N (2012) Which elections can be lost? Political Analysis 49(4), 503–516.Google Scholar
Karp, JA, Nai, A, and Norris, P (2018) Dial “F” for fraud: explaining citizens suspicions about elections. Electoral Studies 53, 11–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kernell, G and Mullinix, K (2019) Winners, losers, and perceptions of vote (mis)counting. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 31(1), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, N (2018) Election-day experiences and evaluations of electoral integrity in unconsolidated democracies: evidence from Nigeria. Political Studies 66(3), 667–686.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, N and Lührmann, A (2017) Public trust in manipulated elections: the role of election administration and media freedom. Electoral Studies 50, 50–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunda, Z (1990) The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin 108(3), 480–498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lago, I and Martinez i Coma, F (2017) Challenge or consent? Understanding losers’ reactions in mass elections. Government and Opposition 52(3), 412–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Little, A (2019) The distortion of related beliefs. American Journal of Political Science 63(3), 675–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maldonado, A and Seligson, M (2014) Electoral trust in Latin America. In Norris, P, Frank, R and Martínez i Coma, F (eds), Advancing Electoral Integrity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 229–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauk, M (2020) Electoral integrity matters: how electoral process conditions the relationship between political losing and political trust. Quality & Quantity, Online First, 1–20.Google Scholar
Norris, P (2014) Why Electoral Integrity Matters. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norris, P and Grömping, M (2019) Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (pei-9.0). Harvard Database, V2. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/PDYRWL.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norris, P, Garnett, HA, and Grömping, M (2020) The paranoid style of American elections: explaining perceptions of electoral integrity in an age of populism. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 30(1), 105–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robertson, G (2017) Political orientation, information and perceptions of election fraud: evidence from Russia. British Journal of Political Science 47(3), 589–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosas, G (2010) Trust in elections and the institutional design of electoral authorities: evidence from Latin America. Electoral Studies 29(1), 74–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Hernández-Huerta and Cantú Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CAFHEB
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Hernández-Huerta and Cantú supplementary material

Hernández-Huerta and Cantú supplementary material

Download Hernández-Huerta and Cantú supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 291.5 KB