Election results and democratic discontent: Expectations, extremism, and democratic values in post-election Brazil
Journal of Public Economics · 2026 · Matteo F. Ferroni
Abstract
I study how economic expectation shocks induced by elections contribute to democratic discontent in polarized societies, focusing on the 2022 Brazilian presidential election. Using newly collected survey data, I investigate how respondents’ expectations and attitudes toward democracy evolved after the opposition candidate’s narrow victory. By resurveying respondents post-election, I show that losing polarized voters who overestimate their candidate’s chances of winning experience a large negative economic expectation shock, as well as an increase in their anti-democratic sentiment. In an additional survey experiment, I provide causal evidence that this shock is a driver of democratic discontent, by showing that positively updating respondents’ economic expectations reduces their anti-democratic sentiment.