Rhetoric and Losers: The Comparative Impact of Concession on Trust in Government

• In Event: New Approaches to Attitudes toward Democracy and Its Institutions

Abstract

Following his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump broke with tradition and refused to concede. In doing so, he also declined to issue a formal concession speech. True to form, he instead turned to Twitter as a means of signaling exactly what he thought, sowing doubt among his supporters as to the legitimacy of the results. Perhaps the most notable of his tweets in this respect is, “Stop the steal!” (Donald Trump via Twitter, 2021). This message reflects a broader belief among many voters that the election was rigged, fueled largely by President Trump himself and other major figures in the Republican party. Corcoran (1994) highlights that the concession speech is a “rhetorical enactment of failure … a kind of ritual sacrifice … a supremely personal resignation.” These humble expressions surely fail to characterize Donald Trump. His failure to concede should thus come as no surprise. Regardless, the rhetoric he used had a potent impact on public perceptions about the election, particularly among his most loyal supporters.

How do concession speeches impact trust in government? Concession has historically played a key electoral role in as many countries as there are democracies. It has done so largely in the form of post-election rhetoric like speeches (and these days, Tweets). Such speeches help to usher in peaceful transitions of power by restoring a sense of national unity and contributing to democratic consolidation. Despite this omnipresence, the causal effect of concession speeches on trust in government has not been systematically studied in the context of political science. Until recently, perhaps, it has been largely taken for granted that losers of a fair and free election will concede. We seek to address this gap in the literature by drawing on research in both political psychology and comparative politics to establish a theory for how and why concession matters in the post-election context as a function of trust in government. In particular, concession speeches mobilize rhetoric, loss, and incumbency to affect which cues elites give the public which in turn shapes mass political behavior and beliefs.

We use a novel survey experiment fielded in the United States, Hungary, and the Netherlands to investigate the effect of concession speeches on trust in government. In all three cases, we sought responses in the midst of important national elections, but before results were widely reported. In the United States, this meant that participants took the survey throughout the first week of November in 2020, during the presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The experiment consisted of three conditions: two treatments and a control. In all three conditions, participants were given the following information: “Your country is experiencing more political division than ever. Elections between political parties are closely contested and the stakes are high.” Subjects assigned to the control saw only this string of text and nothing more. In the two treatments, however, subjects were asked to imagine that they belonged to a political party that had just lost a closely contested election. Treated subjects were then tasked with reading a short excerpt from a concession speech given by a well-known leader of their party. Each treatment varied in the type of post-election rhetoric that was used and the way it contextualized loss through either concession or non-concession. The concession speech treatment was designed to increase trust in government by fostering unity and making an appeal to democratic values. Conversely, the non-concession speech treatment was designed to decrease trust by casting doubt on the election in an antagonistic and belligerent manner.

We find that post-election rhetoric applied in the form of a non-concession speech significantly diminished trust in government across participants in all three countries. Furthermore, incumbency served to moderate this effect –– reducing trust in government more among those who support incumbent parties than those who do not. This means that the nature of post-election rhetoric matters; truculent speeches that dispute election results have the potential to seriously undermine peaceful transitions of power in all types of democracies. We show that one mechanism through which this occurs is by reducing trust in government. As trust in government erodes, so too does democracy.

Authors

• Abigail Woodfield, Stonybrook University

• Quinn Mecham, Brigham Young University