elections
Definition
Elections refers to institutionalized democratic processes through which citizens choose political representatives, and which have documented consequences for citizens' psychological orientations toward the political system. Research using longitudinal data collected before and after the 2024 UK General Election found a general increase in political trust following the vote, with winners showing a larger gain than losers. The mere existence of an electoral and voting process appears to increase trust, likely through heightened perceptions of procedural justice, while the specific outcome modulates how much trust rises for any given voter. Among participants who had invested heavily in collective action and whose local candidate failed to win a seat in Parliament, the typical post-election trust increase was absent.
Sources: Marinthe et al. (2026)
Related Terms
- longitudinal (1 shared article)
- collective action (1 shared article)
- political trust (1 shared article)
Applications
Elections and Political Trust
Political trust tends to increase in the aftermath of an election, reflecting the procedural legitimacy that the voting process confers on democratic institutions. In the 2024 UK General Election, Labour voters showed a significantly larger post-election trust gain than supporters of losing parties, and local results produced a parallel pattern, with trust rising more when a voter's preferred candidate won their constituency than when that candidate lost. The relationship is moderated by prior collective action engagement, such that heavy investment in election-related collective action was associated with no trust increase when the local candidate was defeated.
Sources: Marinthe et al. (2026)
Elections and Collective Action
Political collective action interacts with electoral outcomes in shaping post-election trust. Among non-Labour voters, greater pre-election collective action predicted lower political trust overall, whereas the same association was nonsignificant among Labour voters, indicating that the psychological cost of unsuccessful action is borne primarily by those whose party lost. This moderation was sensitive to measurement, persisting with a Rasch-scored engagement measure but not when engagement was coded as a simple binary variable.
Sources: Marinthe et al. (2026)
