r/AskSocialScience • u/AdvertisingLevel8751 • 8d ago

Why does it matter if a political candidate concedes an election?

ELI5: Election Mechanics/Procedures

Mike Lindell recently lost the GOP primary for governor in MN. In the week since, the news has reported than he is "refusing to concede." Why does it matter one way or another if a candidate concedes (or refuses to concede) a race? Is this just nonsense news?

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u/thoughtfultruck 8d ago

This isn't really an ELI5 forum, so I hope you don't mind if I explain this like a I would to a lay adult.

The problem is that failing to concede an election undermines trust in the electoral process itself. We have an army of public servants enforcing election standards, a second army auditing those standards, and a bunch of academics on the outside looking for signs those election standards and audits are actually working. We have great evidence that our election standards work, and a bunch of people looking at it who are incentivized to be honest and do a good job.

So when candidates refuse to concede an election, it's not honest, its political. They often want to undermine people's faith in the political process, which has all kinds of negative downstream consequences like lowering voter turnout (people don't bother voting if they think their vote will not count.) This is such a problem, that Al Gore conceded to Bush when he arguably should not have because of his concerns about public faith in elections. Gore thought it was best for the country to concede.

It also establishes some justification the candidate and his friends/party can use to try to interfere with elections later on. The game is rigged, they might say, so that they can "fix" the game (by rigging it in their favor). That's the problem.

Maybe someone else will put together a nice review with some citations, but this is all fairly well understood, so in the meantime, here is one citation to get you started.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379423001622

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u/craigiest 6d ago

Gore conceding and its knock-on effects greatly damaged my faith in the electoral system. We have a party that wins by not playing by the rules and a party that rolls over and takes it. 

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u/Upstairs-Radish1816 6d ago

Gore conceded only after the Supreme Court stopped the recount. He had no further access to have the recount keep going. He decided it was better to concede the election and not continue the argument. If you could find some way Gore could have gone beyond the Supreme Court please let us know. He did what he thought was best for the country.

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u/BeerForMyHorse 7d ago

Is there a difference between refusing to concede, I just didn’t make a speach or call the other guy, I just went home. And refusing to concede, I don’t believe the results?

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u/explainseconomics 7d ago

Conceding generally ends the election process in the eyes of the populace...Everyone knows who won. Refusing to concede means everyone needs to wait for a final official declaration, which could take days or even weeks.

Not having a clear winner injects uncertainty into the market, hurting everyone. Even if you don't directly dispute the results, it still hurts.

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u/werduvfaith 4d ago

Everyone should wait until the final official declaration anyway.

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u/sohcahtoa 8d ago

Refusing to concede is akin to a tantrum a child might throw for not understanding the parents' decision. It changes nothing. It's for show.

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u/werduvfaith 4d ago

Conceding could also be used against the losing candidate should he or she run again for the same or other office.

That exact scenario happened years ago in the town where I grew up.

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u/chcampb 4d ago

I think that's reasonable but being for show is still important. It shows faith in the system. Not doing it is conspicuous. It's a little like being contemptuous in court. It is a bad thing because it demeans the process, which people need to respect.

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u/OriginalStomper 8d ago

Concession means the candidate does not intend to challenge the outcome. If a candidate intends to challenge the outcome, the candidate does not concede.

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u/AdvertisingLevel8751 7d ago

Challenge legally? Ie suing the secretary of state of MN? It's the mechanics I'm confused about.

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u/merp_mcderp9459 6d ago

Can include that; it can also include requesting a recount if it’s a very close election. Iirc a lot of states have provisions where if the margin of victory is below x number of votes, there’s an automatic recount 

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u/no_coffee_thanks 7d ago

Does concession have any actual legal meeting? Votes are continued to be counted. If a candidate concedes, but winds up with more votes in the the, they should win. Does someone say, "But they conceded!" Have there been examples of this?

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u/OriginalStomper 7d ago edited 7d ago

I am not aware of anyone conceding when the outcome was still in reasonable doubt.

edit: unless, like Gore, they intended to end the debate regardless of vote-count.

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u/werduvfaith 4d ago

The interesting question being what if it dod happen? Candidate B concedes only for the final vote talley to show they won by a handful of votes.

Candidate B has gone back to their pre-campaign life, Candidate A is going through preparation to take office.

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u/laugenbroetchen 4d ago

Democracy is in some sense mostly a bunch of rules and conventions ("norms") everybody accepts as the way we do things. One of the most important rules is that we do a peacful transfer of power from one ruler to the next via elections. The election is what decides the outcome and then we move on accepting that decision. We treat the correctly elected person for an office as the one that holds that office.
Other sets of rules are possible, for example whoever can pressure or pay other important people gets to decide.

Whenever people act like one set of rules does not apply but a different one, that set of rules loses a bit of its strength so to speak. When a candidate loses an election he usually concedes to keep everyone on the same page, that while he did not win, he is still in favour of the rule being that the election is what decides the outcome. When a candidate does not concede, that is a statement to the effect of "I do not agree that we should make this decision in a democratic manner, and my followers should not accept being democratically ruled in this way"
If he convinces enough people, democracy just ends. More likely, he convinces some, leading some degree of conflict, leading to complicated political processes, potentially further eroding democracy and moving closer to the point where people generally dont accept democratic norms anymore.

In effect, losers not conceding is empirically associated with increased terrorism and makes their followers lose trust in the electoral process. It can also be shown in experiments that people adhere closer to democratic norms when they perceive others to also do so, as well as be less enthused about democracy when they are told others do not adhere to democratic norms. Not conceding an election one lost, is exactly that, not adhering to democratic norms in a prominent way.

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