ABSTRACT
Previous research shows that elections’ perceived fairness is linked to turnout and availability of meaningful partisan choices. We focus here on the consequences of these perceptions upon evaluations of the performance of a country's democracy, perceived threat to one's lifestyle, and evaluations of the way the economy will perform after the elections. The objective is to link the perceived fairness of elections to systemic level performance indicators of democracy. We use panel survey data from 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2018 general elections and cross-sectional survey data before the 2017 constitutional referendum in Turkey and test the expectation that as perceived electoral fairness declines, so will satisfaction with democracy and future economic performance expectations while the threat to lifestyle is likely to increase.
Perceptions of electoral fraud; partisanship; perceptions of fairness of elections; Turkey
