S1 Appendix -

<div><p>Citizens who support a party which enters government are systematically more satisfied with democracy compared to voters who supported a party which ends up in the opposition. This relationship is labelled as the “winner-loser gap,” but we lack firm causal evidence of this gap. We provide a causal estimate of the effects of voting for a winning or losing party by leveraging data from surveys fielded <i>before</i> and <i>after</i> new government formations in three well established democracies (Netherlands, Norway and Iceland) were announced in contexts of very high uncertainty. Using a regression discontinuity design comparing citizens’ levels of satisfaction with democracy <i>just before</i> and <i>just after</i> their electoral status (winner or loser) was revealed, we find that the impact of winning or losing is undistinguishable from zero. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.</p></div>