Good Sports or Sore Losers: Watching Sports and Accepting Election Losses

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Communication

Abstract

Perceptions of elections as fair and legitimate are crucial to the functioning of democracy. When a person's favored candidate loses a presidential election, they are more likely to believe that the other side cheated. Yet some supporters of the losing candidate are willing to accept the loss as fair while others believe the election was fraudulently stolen from their preferred candidate. What explains this variation in attitudes among supporters of the losing candidate? I examine the effect of entertainment media, specifically sports, on perceptions of electoral integrity among those supporting a losing candidate. Sports teams lose repeatedly but accept their losses, establishing a norm of peacefully accepting defeats in a competition. I first use panel data from before and after the 2020 election to demonstrate that watching more sports predicts a lesser drop in perceptions of electoral integrity among Trump supporters. I then use an experiment to test if showing the peaceful aftermath of sporting events increases perceptions of electoral integrity in the face of losses. I conclude by discussing how seemingly-apolitical entertainment media nevertheless establishes norms that can have important political ramifications.

Author

• Alexander Tolkin, Duke University