Individual Differences in Losers' Consent
While winning and losing are experienced by individuals and create a lens through which citizens view politics, in this chapter we examine whether individuals’ political predispositions, measured by partisanship and ideology, matter for how they view the system. We find that voters’ political predispositions heighten the effect of winning and losing, though they do not affect levels of winners’ and losers’ consent in all circumstances. In those cases where we find evidence of mediating effects, they point to such predispositions acting as amplifiers, rather than as buffers for the winner-–loser effect. Winners who are strongly attached to their political party express more positive appraisals of the political system’s performance than other winners. With regard to ideological extremism, we find that ideologues are particularly prone to view the system through the lens of winning and losing.
Keywords: election outcomes, elections, extremism, ideology, legitimacy, losers, partisan identification, partisanship, system support, winners
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