Do elections influence trust?

This paper investigates the impact of elections on trust in institutions in some democratic countries. It uses panel data from the European Social Survey (ESS) CRONOS-2 database, which collected trust data twice in nine European countries within a short period. Between the two data collection waves, elections took place in some countries but not in others, resulting in a natural experiment that allowed the testing of differences in trust levels between both groups of countries through an ANCOVA model. The ANCOVA model shows no significant effect of elections on trust levels between both groups of countries, although there are other significant time-invariant factors correlated with trust such as income, age, and left- and right-wing political sympathies. The finding that the political cycle did not significantly affect trust levels underscores the importance of public governance drivers in influencing institutional trust. These results have implications and pose challenges for incoming governments and, more generally, for any actions aimed at influencing institutional trust levels.