Emotions, cognitions and moderation: understanding losers’ consent in the 2016 Brexit referendum

ABSTRACT

Why do some voters accept their defeat and agree to a democratic verdict while some do not? This distinction between “graceful” and “sore” losers is essential for the stability of democratic regimes. This paper focuses on the phenomenon of losers’ consent in the 2016 Brexit referendum using original public opinion data. Extant studies suggest that post-electoral reactions are mainly outcome-driven, consider winners and losers as homogeneous groups, and neglect the individual-level profile and motivations of graceful losers. Using an innovative and direct question to measure losers’ consent, this research finds that voters’ reaction to the outcome is also process-driven. Graceful losers are politically involved and principled citizens who are more inclined to judge the merits of democracy in procedural terms. They are also more politically sophisticated, less emotionally engaged in the electoral decision, hold more moderate views on the object of the vote, and are torn between the options until the end of the campaign. These findings have important implications for democratic theory. The stability of democracies depends not only on sophisticated voters capable of prioritizing the benefits of the democratic process over disappointing outcomes but also on voters who are indecisive, hesitant, and above all, moderate.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Nadeau and Blais (1993) measured the legitimacy of the victory of the winning party in the 1988 Canadian federal election using the question: “As a result of this election, did the Canadian people give the Conservative government the right to implement the Free Trade Agreement?” Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the winners (93%) responded in the affirmative, whereas only 58% of the losers did.

2 The question of the non-binding character of the referendum was virtually absent in the campaign according to the extensive media content analysis published by the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture at Loughborough University (Jackson, Thorsen, and Wring 2016). Beyond media coverage, one may find several references to political arguments on how the referendum was perceived as politically binding even though it was not legally binding. For example:

• - “The prime minister has said he would have to trigger it [Article 50] immediately after a vote, although this might have been a way of emphasising that there would be no going back, to people thinking of voting leave.” (Siddique 2016).

• - During one of the debates on the referendum bill on 9 June 2015, the then Foreign Secretary said, “decision about our membership should be taken by the British people, not by Whitehall bureaucrats, certainly not by Brussels Eurocrats; not even by Government Ministers or parliamentarians in this Chamber” (Hansard 2015).

• - The government leaflet sent to all households advocating a Remain vote told voters that it would implement the result.

3 The battery is formed of the following four statements to which respondents were asked to answer true or false: (1) Switzerland is a member of the EU (false); (2) Every country in the EU elects the same number of representatives to the European Parliament (false); (3) The Netherlands hold at the moment the presidency of the Council of the European Union (true); (4) The European Union has 15 Member States (false).

4 The 37% rallying figure in the case of the Brexit referendum is lower than that of the 1988 “free trade election” in Canada (Nadeau and Blais 1993). This is not surprising given the different scope of the two plebiscites. The 1988 Canadian election was about joining an economic free trade agreement while the 2016 UK referendum was about withdrawing from a much larger economic and political partnership.

5 It may be possible to think of abstainers as having been the real losers of Brexit. Yet, as much as 46% of the abstainers we surveyed expressed a neutral position on our Emotion scale (online appendix Table A1) and about half of them said that the UK government should accept the referendum’s result (online appendix Table A2). These figures do not lend much support to the idea of abstainers having been deeply disappointed with the outcome.

6 The figures in this paragraph combine “satisfied” and “very satisfied” answers.

7 All variable codings are provided in the online appendix.

8 Table A3 in the online appendix, which adds regional dummy variables to this model, further indicates that there is no significant relationship between an individual’s region of residence and the likelihood to accept the referendum’s outcome.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Nadeau

Richard Nadeau is Professor of Political Science at the University of Montreal. His interests are voting behavior, public opinion, political communication and quantitative methodology. A Fulbright Scholar, he has authored or co-authored over 175 articles (published in the most prestigious political science journals), chapters and books including Unsteady State, Anatomy of a Liberal Victory, Citizens, French Presidential Elections, The Austrian Voter, Health Care Policy and Opinion in the United States and Canada, Latin American Elections and Le comportement électoral des Québécois (Donald Smiley Award 2010).

Éric Bélanger

Éric Bélanger is Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. His research interests include political parties, public opinion, and voting behaviour. He has published more than 50 articles on these topics in scholarly journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, the European Journal of Political Research, and the Canadian Journal of Political Science. He is also the co-author of 7 books including The National Question and Electoral Politics in Quebec and Scotland and Le comportement électoral des Québécois.

Ece Özlem Atikcan

Ece Özlem Atikcan is Assistant Professor in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the European Institute of the University College London in the UK. Her research combines a theoretical focus on political campaigns, issue framing, lobbying, transnational social movements, and diffusion with a regional focus on the European Union. Her work has appeared in European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Integration, and as a book with Cambridge University Press.