Communicating group norms through election results

In a representative democracy, leaders (ideally) who are elected through the electorates should indicate consensus that the newly elected leader truly does represent the majority of the nation or the group. That is, once elected, can the ensuing perceptions of the electorate’s consensus provide the newly elected leader with a sense of legitimacy and the ability to represent the group? Two experiments demonstrate that the perceptions of group consensus stemming from democratic elections can imbue newly elected leaders (even if they were once deviant) with legitimacy. Study 1 (N = 158) demonstrates that normative leaders are perceived as more legitimate than deviant leaders when elected with high voting consensus, which increased the perceived prototypicality of the normative leader through greater perceptions of legitimacy. Study 2 (N = 182) showed that newly elected leaders (vs. candidates) are perceived as more legitimate, which in turn, increases the group’s perceptions of the once deviant leader’s prototypicality, granted that the leader is democratically elected. Results suggest that democratic elections create conditions under which once deviant leaders can gain in perceived prototypicality and create lasting changes to the group identity.