Can political parties narrow the winner-loser gap? The moderating impact of strategic communication on winning and losing party members’ attitudes and behaviour

The reaction of citizens who do not obtain what they want in a democratic process (so-called ‘losers’) is a topic that has attracted much scholarly attention. Recently, researchers have observed a similar winner-loser gap in attitudes and behavior among party members after difficult party decisions have been made. As political parties do not benefit from disaffected and less supportive members who are less active, about to leave the party, and no longer vote for their party, it is important to narrow this winner-loser gap. Recent empirical evidence has shown that procedural fairness, or the inclusiveness of the selectorate, barely impacts the effects of winning or losing (Lingier et al., 2022). Building on these findings, this paper focuses on another strategy to narrow down this gap, namely strategic communication. The reasoning behind this is that if intervening in the decision-making process does not impact the winner-loser gap, post-decision interventions might. Moreover, by an intervention post-decision, political parties might not only convince their members that the party took the right decision but this strategy can also be seen as an opportunity to use the internal conflict to stress the parties’ principles once more and/or undermine the support of opposing parties. Hence, this paper will investigate if framing or negative campaigning can narrow the gap in attitudes and behavior between winners and losers of the decision to (not) participate in a coalition government by the use of survey experiments.