Presidential Election Concessions

A fundamental aspect of democracy is that losers accept defeat, but systematic data on post-election concessions worldwide has been limited. This article presents the first global dataset on concessions in presidential elections in all countries worldwide from 1980 to 2024. We find that candidates in democratic countries are more likely to concede compared to candidates in autocratic countries. Losing incumbents are more likely to concede compared with non-incumbents who lose. Concessions are correlated with fewer post-election protests, including those alleging electoral fraud. We also highlight the challenges associated with using data on concessions to assess the quality of democracy. Concessions are good for democracy if the election was truly free and fair, but may be bad for democracy otherwise. This contradiction highlights the danger in analyzing potential symptoms of backsliding without consideringunderlying regime type.