This study uses a five-wave panel survey from Brazil's 2022 presidential campaign to examine how political alignment and trust in elections interact. Drawing on within-between models that separate stable differences between voters from changes within individuals over time, we find that supporters of then-President Jair Bolsonaro consistently trusted the electronic voting system less than other voters. Among his supporters, trust was higher for those who expected him to win and lower for those who expected him to lose. Within-person analysis also shows that shifting vote intention toward Bolsonaro is associated with declining trust. Elite cues and outcome expectations jointly shape electoral trust.

The study of democratic backsliding has overwhelmingly focused on winners and how they undermine institutions and democratic norms. The consent of electoral losers has received far less attention despite being equally central to democratic stability. As polarization intensifies, electoral defeat may be increasingly experienced as a threat rather than routine alternation of power. We conceptualize consent as acceptance of electoral outcomes and recognition of the winners' legitimacy to govern, going beyond standard reliance on satisfaction with democracy. Drawing on a pre-registered design in Spain — a polarized parliamentary democracy where the plurality winner was excluded from office in the 2023 election through a coalition agreement — we combine a five-wave panel (2023–2026) with vignette and conjoint experiments. Our results show that in a polarized context, electoral defeat generates an erosion of democratic consent that does not fade away over time. This erosion is driven by defeat itself, not by specific parliamentary dynamics of government formation. We also find a modest increase in the preference for anti-pluralistic candidates, but the erosion of consent does not translate into a full authoritarian backlash.

The losers’ consent principle—that in democracies losers must accept and comply with electoral defeat—appears increasingly challenged. This erosion has been linked to affective polarization, yet the precise connection between the two phenomena remains underspecified. We advance and test a novel theoretical framework, arguing that animosity toward the election winner—the party expected to control executive power—motivates losers to contest results due to anticipated harmful government actions. Using an original pre-registered experiment fielded during Austria’s 2024 elections and a regression-discontinuity design with global data, we show that losing to one’s most disliked party lowers democratic satisfaction and raises support for contestation. Mixed-methods analyses reveal these reactions stem from substantive concerns about policy and undemocratic actions by the winner, not mere emotion. Our findings clarify a pathway from affective polarization to losers’ dissent, via winner animosity, and raise normative questions about the role of consent in democracy when contestation reflects militant democracy rationales.

Does making the concrete costs of polarization salient lead to recognition of the problem and to voluntary action against its consequences? We study this question through a multi-wave panel experiment conducted in Brazil during the 2026 general election. Respondents are randomly assigned to two interventions emphasizing either (a) the macro-level costs of polarization for democracy and the economy or (b) its micro-level costs for social and family relationships, or to a placebo control. We posit that awareness-raising treatments may increase the salience of polarization as an issue, increase willingness to act against its consequences, improve recognition of electoral results, and strengthen commitment to democratic norms.

Political elites increasingly question the integrity of elections and the legitimacy of governments. We examine whether this delegitimizing rhetoric can make citizens less law-abiding. Building on the literature that links legitimacy beliefs to compliance, we expect exposure to this rhetoric to weaken citizens' willingness to comply with the law by reducing the perceived legitimacy of the government and the political system. Using pre-registered survey experiments in Brazil and Spain with over 5,000 respondents, who read authentic statements by right-wing leaders questioning the legitimacy of the government, we find that treated respondents were less likely to request information about how to pay the taxes associated with a prize and, in Brazil, they became more tolerant of law-breaking. These effects, however, are concentrated among respondents opposed to the senders, who also became more trusting of the political system. Analyses of open-ended responses suggest that, rather than eroding legitimacy, the rhetoric triggered contempt toward the senders, an emotion associated with withdrawal rather than confrontation. A complementary test among Spaniards who had not complied with the mandatory V-16 emergency beacon, a regulation contested by right-wing parties, yields null results. Our findings suggest that trusting institutions and feeling bound by their rules are distinct, and that the consequences of delegitimizing rhetoric extend to those who reject it.