Popular consent is an essential element for success and stability of democratic regimes. Research has convincingly proven that “electoral winners” (i.e. voters casting a ballot for a party included in the post-electoral government) are more satisfied with democracy than supporters of the opposition parties. However, little is known about the dynamics of satisfaction during the electoral cycle: do winners become happier and losers even more discontent over time, and if so, to what extent such pattern varies between different institutional contexts? We approach this question by utilizing an interview date in the European Social Survey (ESS) data (rounds 1 through 7) to position individuals within the different stages of electoral cycle. The results from mixed models (n=189,646, nested in 170 surveys conducted in 32 countries) suggest that whereas the lowest levels of satisfaction are found among electoral losers in majoritarian electoral systems and Central and Eastern European countries, satisfaction with democracy per se stays relatively stable over time. This is a reassuring finding given a growing polarization in many electoral democracies: winning or losing does not remarkably differentiate the electorate in terms of satisfaction.
