Explaining uneven American support for electoral democracy: How partisanship conditions the winner-loser gap

What explains variation in American support for electoral democracy? We argue that the longstanding winner-loser gap in post-election democracy support is conditioned by partisan identity, reflecting a deeper partisan divide in public commitment to electoral democracy. Using CES panel surveys fielded immediately before and after the 2020 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections, we show that election outcomes cause immediate shifts in individuals’ attitudes about core elements of electoral democracy relative to their pre-election baselines. However, these shifts do not translate into stable differences in overall levels of democracy support. In both victory and defeat, Republicans express weaker overall commitment to electoral democracy than Democrats. This diverges from classic winner–loser gap theory, which expects electoral winners to exhibit greater democracy support than electoral losers, regardless of which party prevails. We further demonstrate that Americans’ near-universal nominal support for democracy masks greater fragility and partisan asymmetry in concrete support for the core institutional practices that sustain democratic governance.