The Effect of Electoral Inversions on Democratic Legitimacy: Evidence from the United States

Author(s):  
John M. Carey ◽  
Gretchen Helmke ◽  
Brendan Nyhan ◽  
Mitchell Sanders ◽  
Susan C. Stokes ◽  
...  

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.

2021 ◽  
Vol VI (III) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Muhammad Nadeem Mirza ◽  
Lubna Abid Ali ◽  
Irfan Hasnain Qaisrani

This study intends to explore the rise of Donald Trump to the White House. Why was Donald Trump considered a populist leader, and how did his populist rhetoric and actions impact the contours of American domestic and foreign policies? The study adopted qualitative exploratory and explanatory research techniques. Specific methods utilised to conduct the study remained political personality profiling. It finds that the populist leaders construct the binaries in the society by dividing the nation into two groups: �us� the people, against �them� the corrupt elite or other groups presented as a threat to the lives and livelihood of the nation. Though populism as a unique brand of politics remained active through most of the US history, yet these were only two occasions that populists were successful in winning the American presidential elections � Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Donald Trump in 2016. Structural and historical reasons became the biggest cause behind the election of Donald Trump, who successfully brought a revolution in American domestic and foreign policies. And if structural issues in the United States are not addressed, there is a clear chance that Trump � who is not withering away � will come back to contest and challenge any competitors in the 2024 presidential elections.


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (S1) ◽  
pp. S57-S65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Oates

The Russian and American media spheres converged to an unprecedented degree during the 2016 US presidential elections when reports of a possible dossier on Donald Trump emerged. This article considers the degree to which the media tactic of kompromat, which is the Russian abbreviation for “compromising material,” can infiltrate the US media ecology.


Subject US relations with North and South Korea under the incoming Trump administration. Significance The period of transition to Donald Trump's presidency in the United States has displayed neglect and misunderstanding of Korean peninsula affairs, adding to risks for the region as it approaches a period of significant strategic challenge. Impacts Until Trump's team enunciates policy on the Koreas, responses to events will be unprepared and reactive. Trump's policy will influence presidential elections in South Korea, where left-of-centre candidates question the value of the US alliance. The Trump administration’s policy and communication via Twitter heightens risk of misunderstanding within the region.


Author(s):  
Corwin Smidt

This article examines the role of Catholics within the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Although Catholics were once a crucial and dependable component of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, their vote in more recent years has been much more splintered. Nevertheless, Catholics have been deemed to be an important “swing vote” in American politics today, as in recent presidential elections they have aligned with the national popular vote. This article therefore focuses on the part that Catholics played within the 2020 presidential election process. It addresses the level of political change and continuity within the ranks of Catholics over the past several elections, how they voted in the Democratic primaries during the initial stages of the 2020 presidential election, their level of support for different candidates over the course of the campaign, how they ultimately came to cast their ballots in the 2020 election, and the extent to which their voting patterns in 2020 differed from that of 2016.


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

The Keys to the White House are an index-based prediction system that retrospectively account for the popular-vote winners of every US presidential election from 1860 to 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2008. The Keys demonstrate that American presidential elections do not turn on events of the campaign, but rather on the performance of the party controlling the White House. The Keys hold important lessons for politics in the United States and worldwide. A preliminary forecast based on the Keys indicates that President Obama is a likely winner in 2012, but also reveals the specific problems at home at abroad that could thwart his re-election.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 113-133
Author(s):  
Wojciech Bednarski

Elections in the United States in 1968 in the shade of Vietnam — analysis of the Polish press propaganda on the example of “Trybuna Ludu”War has always been inseparably linked to politics, and polls are extremely sensitive to it and the 1968 presidential elections in the United States were not exceptions in this matter. The research looks at the Polish press propaganda regarding the fight for the most important position in the US. As the main source was used „Trybuna Ludu”, which during this period was considered the most important newspaper in the communist media system. Collected material was subjected to both qualitative analysis how press wrote about candidates, how the American political scene was divided in propaganda and what role in it played war in Asia and quantitative analysis what are dominant trends, what kind of narration predominated in propaganda.


2018 ◽  
pp. 53-68
Author(s):  
Agnieszka STĘPIŃSKA ◽  
Bartosz HORDECKI

The paper presents the results of surveys conducted among students in nearly thirty countries. The surveys concerned the students’ attitudes to the presidential elections in the USA in 2008, and their opinions on the candidates running for election. The attitudes towards the United States, its policy and culture were also surveyed. The results indicate that the attitudes of Polish respondents differ significantly from those of the respondents in other countries. In the fall of 2008, Polish respondents were relatively friendly towards Americans, appreciating their honesty, but disrespecting their incompetence and lack of knowledge. The Polish respondents’ assessments of American policy and culture, the US government and its operations in the international arena were also relatively mild. However, the results of Polish surveys were less favorable to US citizens than the results of earlier surveys. They confirmed that, during the George W. Bush presidency, the attitude of Polish society to everything American slowly, but consistently, grew colder. It seems reasonable to suggest this was a reaction to the US’s global policies and a result of Poles’ dissatisfaction with Polish-American bilateral relations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Jeonghun Min ◽  
Paul-Henri Gurian

Do presidential campaigns matter outside the United States? We examine how public opinion responds to campaign events during Korean presidential campaigns. The fundamental variables of the election year influence vote intention before the campaign begins and substantially influence eventual vote choice. Campaign events assist voters to learn more about the fundamental variables – regionalism, party identification, and retrospective evaluations of the incumbent administration – and this leads to more informed intentions during the campaign. The results suggest that there is substantial congruence in the explanatory power of Holbrook’s ‘equilibrium’ theory and Gelman and King’s ‘enlightenment’ theory in presidential campaigns held in the US and in Korea.


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

The Keys to the White House are an index-based prediction system that retrospectively account for the popular-vote winners of every US presidential election from 1860 to 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2008. The Keys demonstrate that American presidential elections do not turn on events of the campaign, but rather on the performance of the party controlling the White House. The Keys hold important lessons for politics in the United States and worldwide. A preliminary forecast based on the Keys indicates that President Obama is a likely winner in 2012, but also reveals the specific problems at home at abroad that could thwart his re-election.


2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 327-357
Author(s):  
Michael Geruso ◽  
Dean Spears ◽  
Ishaana Talesara

Inversions—in which the popular vote winner loses the election— have occurred in four US presidential races. We show that rather than being statistical flukes, inversions have been ex ante likely since the early 1800s. In elections yielding a popular vote margin within 1 point (one-eighth of presidential elections), about 40 percent will be inversions in expectation. We show this conditional probability is remarkably stable across historical periods—despite differences in which groups voted, which states existed, and which parties participated. Our findings imply that the United States has experienced so few inversions merely because there have been so few elections (and fewer close elections). (JEL D72, N41, N42)


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