Democracy Needs the Loser
The election was all anyone could talk about. The country would soon choose a new President, and conversations in homes, marketplaces, and houses of worship were dominated by a single topic: Who would win? Lurking behind these discussions was a more ominous question: Would there be violence? During the previous election, four years earlier, mobs had burned buildings, snatched ballot boxes, and targeted government leaders for assassination. When the outcome was announced, supporters of the vanquished candidate had erupted. The election, they claimed, had been stolen. Roughly two hundred people died in a matter of days.
Nigerians knew that the 2011 Presidential election might be similar. Muhammadu Buhari, the retired general who had lost in 2007, was facing off against the sitting President, Goodluck Jonathan. Buhari was running as a populist, an avowed outsider, despite the fact that he had been the country’s military head of state in the eighties, before the modern Presidency was established. He promised to bring order and security to Nigerians, and his main base of support came from the country’s rural and working-class voters, who loved him. When Buhari ran and lost in 2003 and 2007, he claimed the elections had been rigged. He challenged the results in court, but both times his case was dismissed.
In many ways, the tension surrounding the election was unsurprising. Nigeria has a federal system comprising dozens of states, and the country is deeply divided. Buhari’s main supporters came from the poor, rural north, and many of them felt left behind by the wealthier, more educated south, where Jonathan was from, and where most of the country’s oil and gas reserves were situated. Compounding this economic divide was a religious one. Jonathan’s region was largely Christian, with increasing support for evangelicalism, while Buhari’s was embracing more extreme forms of Islam. In the early two-thousands, a wave of states in Buhari’s stronghold began to expand the use of Sharia law, and in 2009 the jihadist group Boko Haram sparked an insurgency against the federal government. The two halves of the country distrusted each other. Jonathan’s supporters feared that Buhari and his allies would pursue a conservative religious agenda if in power, while Buhari’s base feared being permanently excluded from government.
If Buhari lost in 2011, he suggested, he would not appeal to the courts again: “Anybody who stands in the way of the people will be crushed by the people.” His supporters echoed his threats, saying that “all hell would be let loose” if Buhari was not declared the winner. Election Day—a Saturday—was peaceful. But violence broke out on Sunday, as preliminary results suggested that Jonathan would win. One of the first attacks took place at a college in the northern city of Zaria. According to Human Rights Watch, a crowd of young people armed with sticks, clubs, and machetes stormed the campus, demanding that students reveal their religious and ethnic identities, along with their political affiliations. Then the mob beat a group of students to death.
The worst violence was in Kaduna, a state in the middle of the country that had a fairly balanced mix of Muslims and Christians. Armed mobs of Buhari supporters roamed the streets, attacking police stations and the homes of Jonathan supporters. Violence then moved farther south, as Christians began to seek revenge against Muslims. The attacks and rioting lasted for roughly three days, and some witnesses reported that it subsided only when the government deployed soldiers to intercede. In the end, an estimated eight hundred people—mainly in Kaduna—were killed, and sixty-five thousand were displaced.
When people think of elections, they usually focus on who might win and the policies that the winner is likely to enact once in office. But equally important in a democracy is how the loser reacts. If he or she does not accept the vote, then portions of a country can become ungovernable. Buhari’s devoted followers did what many, throughout history, have done when their favored leader faced defeat: they turned to violence. Democracies survive only if losers accept the results.
As the United States barrels toward another contentious election, the spectre of such violence looms. The last Presidential election was followed by an attack on the Capitol, and just weeks ago the man who encouraged that attack, Donald Trump, was nearly assassinated. I have been studying contested elections in deeply divided democracies for decades, reading about thousands that have taken place. It’s a rich field filled with experts who have analyzed enormous amounts of data. We know the ways in which an election loss can spark violence, and we know what risk factors make unrest more likely.
The first rule is that, in order to accept defeat, citizens need hope. Hope—the belief that every election will not be the last—is the glue that binds citizens to the democratic process. It drives them to vote, to run for office, and to care that the system survives. When people and parties believe that they can win in the future, they are more likely to accept temporary setbacks. But hope relies on uncertainty. If people feel that they know the outcome of an election in advance, either because their party does not have enough votes or they believe the outcome is rigged, hope disappears.
In its place, violence tends to break out. This is what happened after Buhari’s second and third defeats, but it’s a pattern found throughout history. In Northern Ireland, many Irish Catholics eventually backed the I.R.A. and its violent methods when they became convinced that Protestants, using gerrymandering, voter suppression, and London’s military support, would always win. In Venezuela, violent protests started in 2013, after the incumbent party was declared the winner by a narrow margin and the opposition candidate cried foul. The 2007 Presidential election in Kenya provoked widespread violence—initially, from opposition supporters of Raila Odinga, who alleged that the election was rigged—resulting in more than a thousand deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands.
We know what political conditions make populations vulnerable to losing hope. Majoritarian systems with strong Presidents—such as Nigeria’s—create a winner-takes-all dynamic, in which the party that wins the most votes assumes all, or nearly all, the power. In a parliamentary system, power is often shared by different parties, making coöperation essential. Majoritarian-style systems are more dangerous: losing an election may leave significant portions of the electorate without representation, reduce incentives for interparty collaboration, and allow the winning side to impose its agenda on the losers. This type of system existed in most countries that experienced significant political violence between 1960 and 1995, including Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Rwanda. In the past century, the majority of civil wars appear to have occurred in winner-takes-all systems, rather than in parliamentary ones. After the 2007 election in Kenya, much of the violence occurred between the Kikuyu and Luo ethnic groups, likely because each viewed the election as a high-stakes, zero-sum contest for its political and economic survival. It is the fear of exclusion that drives people to fight.
Governments with parties that are organized by race, ethnicity, or religion make elections even more fraught. Think of the Catholic and Protestant parties in Northern Ireland. If voters choose a party based mainly on their religious or racial identity, then elections become a numbers game, determined by the shifting demographics of the country. If your group is shrinking as a percentage of the population, then you can anticipate, with dreadful precision, the year you will essentially be shut out of the system. Nothing kills hope as fast as knowing that you are becoming a minority in a majoritarian system.
Finally, elections are particularly dangerous in democracies whose institutions are weak or under attack. If citizens believe those in power can manipulate the outcome of an election, then some will come to believe that violence and even war may be justified. Demagogues and would-be dictators, anticipating a potential loss, can groom their supporters to reject the results, using claims of fraud and calls for retribution. Jair Bolsonaro did this in Brazil. Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., has done this in the Philippines. Each used lies and fear to convince their supporters that a loss in the polls was proof that the system itself was illegitimate.
Even though political scientists have long studied these risk factors, almost no one considered the U.S. a serious candidate for post-election violence until recently. Americans have historically had a great deal of trust in their system of government, and hence a long tradition of electoral losers conceding gracefully. America’s first President, George Washington, refused to seek a third term, making clear that the Presidency was not a lifetime appointment. Since then, five Americans have lost the election even after winning the popular vote: Andrew Jackson, Samuel Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton. Tilden won the popular vote in 1876, the highest-turnout election, by percentage of eligible voters, in U.S. history. He also possibly won the Electoral College vote, yet an ad-hoc commission handed the Presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes, likely because of a back-room deal to end military Reconstruction in the South. Tilden, valuing the country’s stability, conceded. In a speech at the Manhattan Club that year, he said, “If my voice could reach throughout our country and be heard in its remotest hamlet I would say, ‘Be of good cheer. The Republic will live. The institutions of our fathers are not to expire in shame.’ ”
But, in the past eight years, these attitudes have changed. It’s now impossible to ignore that America has all the characteristics of a country at risk. We have the exact type of political system—Presidential, winner-takes-all—that is most vulnerable. Various democratic norms are being degraded by gerrymandering and voter suppression, and long-harmful features of our political system—the Electoral College, corporate money, lifetime appointments for judges—show little sign of reform. We also have a candidate for President who is actively sowing mistrust in the upcoming election. Trump has accused Democrats and others, hundreds of times, of attempting to “influence,” “cheat,” “rig,” and “steal” November’s election. In July, he told a group of Christian conservatives that, if they voted for him, “in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.” J. D. Vance, his running mate, has championed the January 6th rioters and said he would have tried to overturn the 2020 election results. This is the type of incendiary rhetoric that Buhari and his team used in the lead-up to the 2011 election.
Meanwhile, the parties themselves seem increasingly split along racial, ethnic, and religious lines. Project 2025, the well-funded Republican initiative backing Trump’s election, aims to yoke the government to Christian nationalist values, creating a state that will impose stringent limits on immigration. The demographic change that has left so many white Americans feeling insecure and threatened will continue to advance. History tells us that the groups that initiate violence tend to be those which had once been politically dominant but are in decline. If Trump loses again, the more extreme members of the MAGA base will have even more evidence that the system no longer works for them, and that their chance of winning in the future is going to plummet. They will lose hope in our federal government, and in our democracy.
What would violence look like if Trump loses? It would likely start with protests against the election results, which could turn into riots. Far-right militias might join in. They would not begin by attacking Democratic voters. Instead, they would first target those they perceive to be traitors within their own party: Republicans who are deemed too moderate, those who have reached across party lines, refused to support MAGA, or who have enacted laws with which these extremists disagree. This is what happened in Nigeria in 2011. Buhari’s most ardent supporters didn’t start by killing Christians who happened to live in the north. They attacked groups who seemed to be collaborating with the federal government: police, party officials. The January 6th rioters who stormed the Capitol also seemed to have targets in mind, including Trump’s own Vice-President, Mike Pence. Rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” for his role in refusing to certify the election for Trump.
In the U.S., extremists would likely then target minorities living in red and purple states, attempting to marginalize supposed interlopers in their communities. In Nigeria, rioters in Muslim-majority areas attacked local Christians, burning their churches and shops. When people feel insecure, they seek to cleanse their communities of those they deem a potential threat. If the white, Christian males who make up the core of the MAGA base no longer have the votes to control the federal government, then they will insure that they have the votes to control many of the red and purple states in which they live.
But the most violence can be expected in the states with a fairly equal balance of white Americans and nonwhite Americans, where power is still being contested. Experts have found that some of the most volatile countries are the ones whose societies are divided into two relatively large groups. Some of the greatest racial tension in the United States has occurred in places where the white and nonwhite populations were relatively even. This included several former Confederate states during Reconstruction, after Black people were given the right to vote and hold office, as well as cities such as Birmingham, Memphis, Cleveland, Gary, and Newark, which experienced bursts of violence as they became minority-white, starting in the nineteen-sixties. It is the mixed cities, states, and regions—just like Kaduna, in Nigeria—where the declining side feels most threatened. In the United States today, this means that places like Georgia, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona could become hot spots of violence.
In the short term, a Democratic loss in November is likely to yield a more peaceful transition. But, in the longer term, we’ll probably see more violence under a Trump Presidency, especially if he uses the office to favor white Americans. Nonwhites are projected to represent a majority of Americans by 2044, and they will not remain silent should they become excluded from power. A response from the left might start, for example, with mass protests around the country. Whether this escalates to violence will depend on how Trump responds; one of the fastest ways to radicalize a population is to answer peaceful protests with force. This is what happened with the Basques in Spain, the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, and Syrians during the Arab Spring. Trump has shown every indication of advocating for a heavy-handed military response.
Is there a way out? One reason to maintain hope is that numerous places in America have already completed the demographic shift, with white majorities becoming minorities. In California, and in cities like Memphis and Birmingham, racial conflict eventually decreased after this transition was complete. California, for example, began to embrace its diversity as its minority population amassed enough support to wield political power. The state shed its reputation for anti-immigrant activism—in the nineties, voters passed a measure that would prevent the undocumented from attending public school—to become a forward-thinking model for policies on inclusion. And, in many cities that elected Black mayors for the first time, tensions declined when it became clear that nonwhite leadership would not hurt whites. White fears of a Black mayor in Los Angeles greatly diminished after Tom Bradley’s highly successful, twenty-year tenure, even though violence flared again during the 1992 riots. In these cases, racial fear was broadly replaced with racial acceptance.
Our greatest hope may be uncertainty itself. A key piece of data that most Americans don’t know is that much of the immigrant population in the United States is unaffiliated with either the Democratic or Republican Party. Surveys also show that many Latinos and Asian Americans remain independent; they don’t feel any affinity for either party, and don’t know where they themselves fit in. This is the gift of democracy—the opportunity to persuade, to work toward new and better futures, and to recognize that both setbacks and victories are what allow this work to continue. ♦
Barbara F. Walter teaches at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of “How Civil Wars Start,” and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
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