In my earlier post on confidence in the voting process, some commenters speculated on the effect of electoral context — in particular, whether the “winners” are more confident that their vote was counted.
Indeed, that seems to be true. Mike Alvarez passes along a second piece of research. Drawing on a survey of voters interviewed both before and after the 2006 election, they find that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to express greater confidence after the election.
bq. Democrats, who can be thought of as winners at the national level for the 2006 election, have a higher probability of being more confident following the 2006 mid-term election relative to Republican voters. Specifically, Democratic voters are a statistically significant 20 points more likely than Republican voters to express a higher level of confidence following the 2006 mid-term election.
Voters are indeed more confident in the process when they triumph. And, interestingly, voting technology also matters:
bq. VVPAT voters [voters who have used a voter-verified paper audit trail] are a statistically significant 9 points more likely to become more confident following the election relative to regular electronic voters.
I know of at least one survey project that plans to ask about the voting experience in 2008, so there will be more research forthcoming soon.