In the present study, we bridge these literatures by investigating how prior engagement in political collective action moderates changes in political trust in the aftermath of a General Election, depending on whether the election outcome is favorable or unfavorable to the voter (i.e., \u201cwinner\u201d or \u201closer\u201d). Our research thus contributes to understanding the conditions under which democratic institutions and processes themselves are related to trust. Across Europe, democracies are facing mounting pressure, as voter turnout falls and authoritarian as well as far-right forces gain ground. These trends fuel concerns about public disengagement and an erosion of trust in democratic institutions (Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Valgar\u00f0sson et al., 2025). In contrast, as a response to future-oriented anxiety arising from multiple crises, some citizens\u2014particularly younger generations\u2014may become more politically engaged and more supportive of democratic principles (Borghi et al., 2025<\/a>). In this current context, the present study\u2019s endeavor to understand alternative levers or inhibitors of trust, specifically institutionalized and non-institutionalized political engagement, might prove crucial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political trust broadly refers to the confidence people have in their government and the extent to which they see their government as trustworthy and competent (Carstens, 2023; Levi & Stoker, 2000; Zmerli & Hooghe, 2013). As such, it is conceived as an evaluative attitude held by a citizen toward their political system or agents, with several components contributing to the overall evaluation, notably, technical competence or success, ethical and fair conduct, and perceived congruence with citizens\u2019 best interests (Bertsou, 2019; Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Devine et al., 2021; PytlikZillig & Kimbrough, 2016). Political trust is thus a critical component in the functioning of democracies, serving as a bridge between individual trust in political actors and broader support for democratic systems (Easton, 1965; Zmerli, 2022). Although political trust can be directed toward various objects (e.g., parties, politicians, institutions), research shows that these attitudes are often strongly correlated, forming a relatively coherent construct (Hooghe, 2011).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political trust has long been recognized as a pillar of democratic systems, fostering support at the behavioral, attitudinal, and ideological levels. Among other things, it relates to greater civic investment, likelihood to vote, and support for democracy as an ideology (e.g., Dalton, 2004; Devine, 2024; Hooghe & Marien, 2013; Lee & Schachter, 2019; Marien & Hooghe, 2011; Tyler, 2001, 2006). Conversely, contexts marked by low political trust face higher difficulties in enacting policies (Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Devine, 2024; Thaker et al., 2019). They also witness greater polarization<\/a>, with citizens becoming more entrenched in their ideological stances and less willing to compromise (Bergbower & and Allen, 2021). Low political trust is also related to the rise of populism (Castanho Silva et al., 2017) and extremism (Devine, 2024; Van Der Meer, 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once lost, trust is difficult to restore (Citrin & Green, 1986; Hetherington, 1998). Indeed, political trust has been on the decline for decades in most Western countries (Carstens, 2023; Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Dassonneville & McAllister, 2021)\u2014or at best, stagnating at low levels (Devine & Valgar\u00f0sson, 2024). It is therefore of utmost importance to understand how political trust evolves, to better predict and foster people\u2019s engagement in civic life, either through institutionalized (e.g., vote) or non-institutionalized, bottom-up routes (e.g., collective action). Importantly, however, the question of how political trust is shaped by those outcomes themselves has largely been overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The electoral process may affect political trust in several ways. First, the mere existence of an electoral and voting process seems to increase trust (Hooghe & Stiers, 2016), probably due to an increased perception of procedural justice (i.e., the perception that political decisions are made in a fair, transparent, and impartial manner; Bos et al., 2014; Citrin & Stoker, 2018; Gulevich et al., 2024). In addition, some research highlights that the outcome of the election may play a role, although evidence is not consistent. Specifically, some research reports an increase in political trust following a win (vs. a loss) of the election (Anderson & LoTempio, 2002; Blais & G\u00e9lineau, 2007; Craig et al., 2006; Dahlberg & Linde, 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, this winner-loser effect may be moderated by prior characteristics of individuals. For example, Fahey and colleagues (2022) showed that individuals with stronger populist orientation distrust the government, whatever the outcome of the election. Ismail and Jia (2025) also found that voters with a stronger national attachment more readily accept a defeat in the elections and express greater willingness to cooperate (a proxy for trust) with the winning party. In line with these recent findings, we propose that prior political engagement (conceptualized as engagement in election-related collective action) may moderate the change in political trust in the aftermath of winning (vs. losing) an election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political collective action\u2014defined as \u201cany action undertaken by individuals as psychological group members to achieve group goals in a political context<\/a>\u201d (van Zomeren, 2016, p. 89)\u2014represents an alternative form of civic engagement, complementary to institutionalized engagement such as voting. The antecedents of collective action have been extensively studied in the social and political psychology literature. Prominent models, such as the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (van Zomeren, 2013; van Zomeren et al., 2008, 2018) emphasize predictors of participation including social (especially politicized) identity, anger, collective efficacy, and moral outrage. Yet, research on the consequences of such actions remain scarce, and virtually none have examined their broader implications for trust in the political system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Previous research has examined how political trust may affect collective action. Such studies tend to demonstrate the absence of a direct effect of political trust on collective action in Western, democratic countries (Devine, 2024; Thaker et al., 2019; Uysal et al., 2025). We examine this question from the opposite direction, and propose that collective action interacts with the election outcome in its association with changes in political trust (pre- to post-election).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two main arguments support our claim: the first focusing on what happens when collective action is successful and the second focusing on what happens when collective action is unsuccessful. First, as briefly mentioned above, recent research has examined the impact of successful or unsuccessful collective action and suggests that success increases the likelihood of sustained action (Louis et al., 2020). Indeed, the success of collective action unifies the movement (Lizzio-Wilson et al., 2021), increases pride (Tausch & Becker, 2013) and feelings of empowerment (Bandura, 1997; Reicher, 2017), and enhances perceptions of collective efficacy (Carvacho et al., 2023)\u2014all factors that foster further collective action. Success may also help recruit individuals who were not previously engaged (Lizzio-Wilson et al., 2021; van de Rijt et al., 2016). We contend that successful political collective action (i.e., collective action taken in order to help one\u2019s candidate win the election) would therefore be related to increased interest and engagement in the broader political context (Kim, 2015). This could support the perception of a functional political system that allows citizen initiatives to emerge and develop\u2014thus being ultimately related to increased political trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second part of our argument relies on work concerning procedural justice perceptions which show what happens when collective action is not successful (Shejale et al., 2025). Prior research in sociology has shown that participation in pro-immigration collective action reduces political trust via diminished perceptions of procedural justice (Toub\u00f8l, 2019). Importantly, this negative impact is implicitly believed to result from collective action’s failure. Experiences of failed collective action may undermine the belief that the political system is responsive to citizen input and thus lead to disengagement with traditional political systems (Otjes et al., 2020; Pirralha, 2017), thereby weakening political trust. Consequently, engagement in political collective action may be associated with reduced political trust following an election outcome that is unfavorable to the voter, which would suggest unsuccessful collective action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In summary, we propose that the association between election outcomes and political trust may be moderated by prior engagement in collective action. Specifically, while winning may be related to reinforced political trust among engaged citizens, losing after an active investment may show the opposite relationship. In democratic contexts, civic engagement may therefore play an amplifying role: It would be positively related to political trust when aligned with favorable outcomes but also negatively related when expectations are unmet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our research was conducted in the United Kingdom, during the most recent 2024 General Election. The UK indeed offers an instructive case. As in most democratic countries (Valgar\u00f0sson et al., 2025), political trust has been on the decline in the UK over the past few decades, especially in the aftermath of Brexit (2016) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2021-2023; see Davies et al., 2021). These events were marked by political controversies (e.g., \u201cPartygate\u201d gatherings by government officials in violation of lockdown rules) that likely further eroded public confidence in political leaders and the political system. In addition, the UK had a decrease in voter turnout over the past two general elections with only 60% of voters mobilizing in 2024, the lowest since 2001 (Sturge, 2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the UK, the party that receives the most seats in Parliament in the House of Commons picks the Prime Minister from among its ranks. There are 650 Members of Parliament (MPs), elected from constituencies delineated by geographical locations, each constituency being made up of an average of 90,000 people. The UK uses a First-past-the-post electoral system, meaning that the candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins the seat. This system can create a discrepancy between local and national outcomes: A voter\u2019s preferred local candidate may win their seat, but if that candidate\u2019s party does not secure enough seats nationally, it cannot form a government and will instead serve in opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2024 election was marked by the return to power of the Labour party, after 14 years of Conservative leadership (Baker et al., 2025). Labour won the majority of seats (411), representing an increase of 209 seats compared with the 2019 General Election. In contrast, Conservative Party lost a substantial number of seats, falling from 365 in 2019 to 121 in 2024. The third major party was the Liberal Democrats, who won 72 seats (i.e., 61 more than in 2019). Other notable parties included Reform UK (5 seats) and the Green Party (4 seats). As a result, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, was elected Prime Minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We investigate how institutionalized and collective investment in the 2024 UK General Election is associated with political trust depending on the perceived effectiveness of this investment, which we conceptualize as the outcome of the election. We expect that winning (vs. losing) the election will be related to increased political trust (after vs. before the election), but that this increase will be moderated by prior investment in political collective action. Specifically, we expect a stronger winner-losing gap in the increase in political trust among individuals who were more actively engaged in collective action prior to the General Election. Put differently, we expect that collective action will be related to an increased level of political trust when winning, but to a decreased level of trust when losing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To test these hypotheses, we rely on a survey of political views of UK respondents around the 2024 UK General Election. For our secondary data analysis, we categorized respondents as being on the \u2018winner\u2019 versus \u2018loser\u2019 side as a function of the success of the party they voted for. Further, we distinguished between outcomes at the national level (i.e., whether one\u2019s preferred party won the most seats) and at the local level (i.e., whether one\u2019s preferred candidate was elected as MP, regardless of the national result). Indeed, proximity may also play a role in how citizens perceive and engage in political matters (see Abrams et al., 2021), although the question of whether local versus national election outcomes have different associations with political trust remains largely unexplored. We therefore used these two levels of outcome to examine whether they relate differently to political trust. This secondary analysis was preregistered: https:\/\/aspredicted.org\/jczh-74hm.pdf.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n UK citizens were recruited through the crowdsourcing platform Prolific and invited to participate in an online study on their political views in the context of the General Election. Participants were pre-screened on the basis of their intended vote to be approximately representative of the four main parties running in the election: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Reform UK. They completed a first questionnaire four days before the 2024 General Election and a second questionnaire one week after the election. This was a large survey that included several measures which pertain to different research questions and are not discussed here. A list of the other measures is available upon request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Six hundred and five participants completed the first questionnaire. Following pre-registered exclusion criteria, the final sample size was N<\/em> = 543 for analyses involving national election outcome (national sample, see Figure 1). This sample was composed of 159 Labour, 167 Conservative, 90 Liberal Democrats, 117 Reform UK, and 10 Green voters. There were 235 men, 303 women, 4 non-binary or other, and 1 undisclosed, with a mean age of 48.33 (SD<\/em> = 14.38). The sample size was based on initial feasibility and budget constraints. A post hoc sensitivity analysis based on the model specifications and parameters showed that it provided 80% power to detect a three-way interaction as small as .046 (powerSim<\/em> package, Luedicke, 2013; 1000 simulations).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because 76 participants did not indicate their constituency, we could not retain them for the analyses involving local election outcome and they were then excluded for the local level analyses (see Figure 1). This \u201clocal\u201d sample was composed of 140 Labour, 143 Conservative, 80 Liberal Democrats, 97 Reform UK, and 7 Green voters. There were 203 men, 260 women, 3 non-binary or other, and 1 undisclosed, with a mean age of 48.04 (SD<\/em> = 14.43).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pre-election questionnaire included a checklist that measured how many different collective actions, if any, participants had engaged in the context of the General Election. Specifically, the item read, \u201cThis short section is about different things people do to express their views on things like government policies, society, the environment around election times. Please indicate which, if any, of the following activities you have done during the past month in preparation for the General Election specifically.\u201d Participants could tick \u201cYes, I have\u201d, for each of 12 actions. These actions comprised 11 political collective action (e.g., \u201csigned a petition\u201d, \u201cjoined a political party\u201d) and one filler item (\u201cWatched a TV discussion about the election\u201d) which we planned not to count as collective action. There was also an option to report an \u201cother\u201d action in an open text field. We initially conducted a content analysis on these answers (n<\/em> = 6) and coded them as collective action (e.g., \u201cSigned up to support and receive party material\u201d; n<\/em> = 3) or not (e.g., \u201cListened to radio discussions about the election\u201d; n<\/em> = 3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We then conducted an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) based on tetrachoric correlation matrix (see details in Supplementary Material, Section 2). A one-factor solution was found acceptable, and the analysis confirmed the filler item should be removed (\u03bb = .40, h<\/em>\u00b2 = .16). The \u201cother\u201d item was also excluded due to its low contribution (\u03bb = .31, h<\/em>\u00b2 = .09). An EFA on the remaining 11 items showed an adequate one-factor structure, with loadings ranging from .44 to .80, and satisfactory communalities (h<\/em>\u00b2 = .20 to .65). Reliability was excellent (\u03b1 = .86, \u03c9 = .87).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We thus computed a sum score representing the number of different actions that people had engaged in, theoretically ranging 0-11 (M<\/em> = 0.51, SD<\/em> = 0.98). The majority of participants did not engage in any action (n <\/em>= 383), whereas the remaining participants (n<\/em> = 160) engaged in between one and eight actions (see Supplementary Material, Section 2, for the full distribution).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Figure 1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Exclusion Criteria for National and Local Samples<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nPolitical Trust and its Determinants<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Political Trust: A Critical Issue in Democratic Systems<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The Impact of the Electoral Process on Political Trust<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Collective Action and Its Potential Role in Political Trust<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Present Study<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The UK General Election<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Hypotheses<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Method<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Participants and Procedure<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Measures<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Collective Action Engagement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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