Can watching sports make voters accept political defeats?

Watching athletes and coaches gracefully accept defeat in televised sports can cause viewers to be more accepting of losses in political elections. By observing these routine displays of sportsmanship, voters become more likely to believe that an unfavorable election result was fair. These findings were published in the journal Political Behavior.

A functioning democracy relies on losing candidates and their supporters accepting electoral defeats. Historically, the vast majority of the losing political party in the United States has accepted that their opponent won fairly. This pattern broke after the 2020 presidential election when a large portion of the losing party expressed skepticism about the voting process.

Alex Tolkin, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, wanted to understand what makes people willing to accept an undesired election outcome. He focused on the concept of legitimating rituals. These are public, repeated behaviors performed by competitors that signal a contest was conducted fairly.

In politics, legitimating rituals include candidates shaking hands before a debate, giving a public concession speech after a loss, and attending the winner’s inauguration. In athletics, these rituals include post-game handshakes, press conferences where defeated coaches acknowledge their loss, and general displays of sportsmanship.

According to social learning theory, people learn how to behave in novel situations by emulating the behavior of others. For someone to learn from a role model, they must observe the behavior, remember it, translate it to their own life, and feel motivated to copy it. Professional athletes and coaches serve as highly visible role models for millions of Americans.

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Sports leagues mandate many of these behaviors to protect the financial value of their games. Coaches and players are routinely fined if they publicly criticize referees or question the fairness of a match. American politics lacks a governing body that can force candidates to follow traditions like concession speeches.

Since major political elections only happen every few years, Americans observe far more legitimating rituals in sports than they do in politics. To explore this dynamic in the real world, Tolkin analyzed data from a large panel study of 2,625 respondents. These participants were surveyed shortly before the 2020 presidential election and again in April 2021.

This survey timeline allowed the researcher to track how individual attitudes shifted after the election results were finalized. The survey asked participants about their intended vote and how frequently they watched popular team sports like football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer. It also measured their belief in the fairness of the election process.

Participants rated the likelihood of various scenarios, such as ineligible people casting ballots, eligible voters being prevented from voting, or votes being counted inaccurately. Following the 2020 election, supporters of the winning candidate became more confident in the election process. Supporters of the losing candidate became less confident.

Among the losing candidate’s supporters, watching sports moderated the decline in trust. Specifically, supporters of the losing candidate who frequently watched team sports reported a smaller drop in their belief that the election was fair compared to those who rarely watched sports. The researcher also compared sports viewership to political media consumption.

While watching partisan television networks like Fox News was associated with a lower baseline belief in election fairness, watching sports was a stronger predictor of a positive shift in attitude after the defeat. The panel study established an association, but Tolkin wanted to test if observing legitimating rituals directly causes changes in political beliefs. He conducted a survey experiment with about 1,000 participants who identified as either Democrats or Republicans.

The experiment was designed to manipulate the specific rituals participants watched. Participants were divided into different groups. Some read a summary of a basketball game and watched a video of the defeated coach giving a gracious post-game press conference.

Others bypassed this sports-related content entirely. Next, all participants read about a fictional mayoral election in Jacksonville, Florida. They reviewed the platforms of two fictional candidates, selected their preferred choice, and wrote a brief explanation for their decision.

All participants were then informed that their chosen candidate had lost in a close race. Following this disappointing news, some participants watched a political concession speech. They were told the speaker was the candidate they had just supported.

To ensure the treatment was identical for everyone, the researcher used an edited video of a real political concession speech and deployed artificial intelligence voice-cloning software to dub in the appropriate fictional candidate’s name. Finally, participants answered a series of questions about the fairness of the fictional election procedures. The experiment revealed that participants who watched the defeated politician concede were more likely to believe the election was legitimate compared to those who did not see the political concession.

Watching the sports concession speech also caused participants to view the political loss as more legitimate. This occurred even though the sports video was about a basketball game and made no mention of politics. The effect of the sports concession was roughly half as large as the effect of the political concession.

These results demonstrated an additive benefit to observing legitimating rituals. Exposure to a message about being a good loser in a non-political context was sufficient to alter political attitudes. When participants were exposed to both sports and political rituals, their acceptance of the election results increased further.

There are several caveats to consider regarding this research. The 2020 presidential election featured a losing candidate who refused to participate in traditional legitimating rituals like concession speeches. It is not entirely known if the observational patterns seen among sports viewers in 2020 will translate to more typical election cycles.

The panel study relied on observational data. The analysis accounted for many demographic factors, but it remains possible that some unmeasured personality trait among frequent sports viewers influenced their reaction to the 2020 election. The experimental study provides the necessary evidence to show a direct causal link between watching rituals and accepting defeat.

In the experiment, participants evaluated a fictional election involving candidates they had only just learned about. Their opinions were likely highly malleable. In real-world elections, partisan attitudes are deeply entrenched, and the effects of viewing a single sports concession speech might be small or short-lived.

The study also measured sports viewership rather than emotional fandom, meaning the participants in the experiment were reacting to a sports coach they had no emotional connection to. The experimental results also revealed some differences based on political affiliation. Members of the Republican party in the study had lower overall belief in election legitimacy than members of the Democratic party.

The effect of the sports concession speech on accepting the fictional election results was roughly half as large for Republicans as it was for Democrats.

The study, “Good Sports or Sore Losers: Sports Fans and Perceptions of Election Legitimacy,” was authored by Alex Tolkin.