A More Decisive Test of the Political Relevance of Irrelevant Events

There are debates about whether irrelevant events like sporting competitions and shark attacks affect political attitudes and behaviours. Some studies argue these events generate emotional reactions that contaminate, to a small extent, political outlooks that are unrelated to the events and should not be rationally influenced by them (e.g., Healy, Malhotra & Mo 2010; Achen & Bartels 2017; Busby, Druckman & Fredendall 2017; Graham et al. 2023). Other studies have contested the validity of the findings (e.g., Fowler & Montagnes 2015, 2023; Fowler & Hall 2018; Müller & Kneafsey 2023). Often, the empirical analyses have examined the effects of irrelevant events with relatively low salience and low emotional stakes, such as a regular-season match of a local football team. We provide a more definitive empirical test of the idea by drawing on a natural experiment during an international context with extremely high emotional stakes. The World Cup of Football is the most widely watched sporting event on the planet. Research shows that World Cup matches alter people’s emotions (Schwarz et al. 1987; Stieger et al. 2015). We conducted a two-wave panel surrounding the final match in the 2022 World Cup. Representative samples were recruited in Argentina and France. Fieldwork for Wave 1 began three days before the final and ended just prior to kickoff. We reached 3000 individuals per country, 6000 altogether. Wave 2 reinterviews of the same respondents started right after the match and stopped five days later. In each survey wave, we captured the following political opinions: presidential approval, presidential trust, political trust, confidence in elections, the importance of national identity, support for immigration, interest in politics, likelihood of voting, affective polarization, and satisfaction with democracy. The analysis provides clear results. Manipulation checks in our surveys confirm that Argentinians became much happier after their country’s victory, confirming the impression drawn from images of millions of people celebrating in the streets of Argentina. Were political outlooks affected by the outcome of the game in this most favourable context? None of the political attitudes and behaviours were significantly swayed by this emotional upheaval. Only opinions relating to the same domain were influenced by the outcome of the football game (such as views regarding FIFA’s selection of Qatar as the host country). This study uncovers no evidence that irrelevant events have consequences on political attitudes and behaviours.