Does sports success increase government support? Voter (ir)rationality in a multiparty context

Abstract

A growing number of studies discuss the impact of non-political factors on the political success of incumbents. Theoretically, this literature addresses core ideas about electoral accountability and voter rationality. Scholars have explored factors such as shark attacks, weather, natural disasters, and sports results. So far, the evidence has been inconclusive and almost exclusively from majoritarian contexts, where government accountability is easy for voters to assign. We contribute with an analysis of whether nationally important sports success, such as Olympic gold medals, affect support for coalition governments in a multiparty context. We use monthly polling from Finland for a 28-year period from Jan 1994 to Dec 2021, which we combine with data on sports success. Our analysis shows that nationally important sports success has no impact on government popularity. The finding holds while controlling for traditional drivers of government popularity and across different operationalizations of government support and sports success. With this finding, the study joins several previous analyses, which have been supportive of voter rationality.