With the election results finally in, Americans are likely to feel a range of emotions from pride and optimism to frustration and disappointment. These feelings reflect the heightened stakes of what many have described as one of the most consequential elections in their history.
The ‘unexpectedness’ of the outcome may also be contributing to the level of dissatisfaction that citizens have with democracy, in particular among those on the losing side of the election. This is consistent with the theory that voters on the losing side of an election tend to have more critical views of the electoral process and to believe that it was rigged (Levy 2021; Sances and Stewart 2015).
In addition, a ‘disconfirmation’ effect may be at play whereby a negative disconfirmation of expectations reduces confidence or satisfaction with democracy. In general, the stronger these negative expectations are, the more likely they will be to produce disconfirming evidence in the form of a surprising or disappointing result.
Nonetheless, a number of studies find that the degree to which citizens perceive that an election was fair and their level of satisfaction with democracy is not as impacted by unexpectedness as might be expected. In fact, in all of the election years studied by the American National Election Study – from 1996 to 2020 – a majority of respondents correctly predicted who would win the presidential election, even when there were indications that their favoured candidate might be the underdog.