Political Attitudes of Defeated Candidates in an American State Election

Electoral victories and defeats occur repeatedly. This is especially true in democratic political systems where key governmental roles are filled through periodic elections. The attitude of defeated candidates toward the regime norms directly affects the system stability, because disaffected by defeat, these candidates may withdraw their support for the regime and may also translate such disaffection into radical political action. Despite the potential threat the defeated electoral candidates can pose to democratic stability, their political attitudes have rarely been investigated systematically in political science literature. Do defeated candidates exhibit an attitude toward the democratic rules and norms governing electoral competition significantly different from that of winning candidates? Do defeated candidates become politically less active after the election than they were before? Under what conditions do they become disaffected with the democratic rules and norms? This paper attempts, first, to compare the political attitudes of both winning and losing candidates, and second, to explore the variables which might account for differences in such attitudes. The data used in this paper are derived from a larger study of political recruitment in Oregon. Structured interviews were conducted with both winning and losing candidates who ran for the Oregon House of Representatives in the 1966 election. The samples were interviewed at three different times: before and after the primary, and after the general election. This research strategy permits us to analyze the effect of the outcome of the election on the attitudes of the candidates. Data were collected on the candidates' degree of support for the democratic rules of competition, their expected changes in political activity as a result of participation in the election, their career ambitions, and the perceived reward-cost, i.e., the material and psychological gains or losses which accrue to the candidates as a direct result of their participation in the election.