A Tale of Bias: Longitudinal Evidence of the Effect of Electoral Defeat on Citizens’ Evaluations of the Economy

Abstract The winner–loser electoral status may affect citizens’ perceptions of the national economy. In the context of Europe, this issue has aroused little interest as multi-party competition makes it difficult to study. We look at the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum, a top-down national referendum, which approximates second-order elections and divides voters in two groups, allowing the study of the effects of elections on opinions. Using a pre-post referendum panel survey, results show that losers—relying on motivated reasoning—radically change their retrospective and prospective economic evaluations after the referendum, and that this effect is conditional on party identification. The article provides new evidence on the role of partisan loyalties in the adjustment of economic perceptions.