2023 | Electoral Outcomesand Satisfaction with Democracy: A Comparison of Regional and National Elections, Electoral Studies.
Subnational governments have become more numerous and more powerful around the world, increasing the importance of subnational elections. However, we still know little about the impact of regional electoral outcomes on citizens’ political support, and there is no systematic comparison of the impact of election outcomes on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. In this research note, authors provide such a comparison by investigating how the winner-loser gap in citizens’ satisfaction with democracy differs across regional and national elections. Using data from Canada, Germany and Spain, they first show that there is a winner-loser gap in satisfaction with democracy following regional elections. The winner-loser gap at the regional level is, however, substantially smaller than the one generated by national election outcomes. Next, they find heterogeneous effects for voters who believe that the regional government strongly influences their quality of life. They conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.
