Watching sports figures accept defeat with good grace may make voters more willing to accept an election loss, according to research published in Political Behavior. The study found that observing sportsmanship in a non-political setting increased participants’ belief that an unfavorable election result was fair.
Alex Tolkin, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, examined whether public rituals that signal a contest has been conducted fairly can influence how people respond to losing. In politics, these include concession speeches and attending an opponent’s inauguration; in sports, they can include post-game handshakes and defeated coaches acknowledging a loss.
In a panel study of 2,625 people surveyed before the 2020 US presidential election and again in April 2021, supporters of the losing candidate became less confident in the fairness of the election after the result. Those who frequently watched team sports reported a smaller decline in confidence than those who rarely watched. The analysis found that sports viewing was a stronger predictor of a positive shift in attitudes after the defeat than watching partisan television networks, though the panel data alone could not establish cause and effect.
Tolkin then conducted an experiment with about 1,000 participants who identified as Democrats or Republicans. Some watched a video of a defeated basketball coach giving a gracious post-game press conference, while others did not. Participants then chose between two fictional candidates in a close mayoral election and were told their preferred candidate had lost. Some also watched a concession speech attributed to that candidate.
Participants who saw the political concession were more likely to consider the fictional election legitimate. Watching the basketball coach’s concession also increased acceptance of the political loss, despite the video having no political content. Its effect was roughly half as large as that of the political concession, and seeing both kinds of rituals increased acceptance further.
The researchers note that the findings have limitations. The 2020 election involved a losing candidate who did not follow traditional rituals such as giving a concession speech, and it is unclear whether the observed patterns would carry over to more typical elections. The experiment also involved fictional candidates whom participants had only just encountered, so their views may have been more flexible than voters’ established real-world political beliefs.
The experiment found differences by party affiliation: Republicans had lower overall confidence in election legitimacy than Democrats, and the effect of the sports concession on acceptance of the fictional result was about half as large among Republicans. The study, titled “Good Sports or Sore Losers: Sports Fans and Perceptions of Election Legitimacy,” was authored by Tolkin.
Sources: PsyPost.