Abstract Introduction Major political events can serve as naturalistic stress tests, disrupting sleep and heightening emotional affect. The 2020 United States presidential election was rather unusual as the outcome was not projected for several days, prolonging uncertainty beyond election night. Emotional responses to such events are likely to depend on whether the apparent or eventual outcome aligns with individuals’ political preferences and on the strength of their ideological commitment. Sleep is a modifiable behavior that may further shape these trajectories. The study examines how election-night sleep, political ideology, and outcome congruence jointly relate to changes in emotional affect. Methods A non-representative, primarily liberal-leaning (69.6%) convenience sample of US (n=437) and non-US-residing (n=106) participants was recruited. Participants completed daily online surveys assessing sleep duration and quality, affect, alcohol use, and related health measures during a baseline period (October 1–13, 2020) and the days surrounding the 2020 election (October 30–November 12, 2020). Linear mixed-effects models will estimate within-person changes in emotional affect across the election window as a function of election-night total sleep time and sleep efficiency, ideology strength, and outcome congruence. Results Planned analyses are anticipated to show higher negative affect during the election window than on baseline mornings. Misaligned outcomes (preferred candidate not winning) and stronger ideological positions are expected to be associated with larger and more persistent elevations in negative affect. Longer and more efficient election-night sleep is expected to attenuate these elevations and to be associated with steeper declines in negative affect over subsequent days, particularly among participants with misaligned outcomes and strong ideological commitment. Conclusion These anticipated patterns would suggest that misalignment between political preferences and election outcomes, especially among strongly ideological individuals, is associated with heightened and prolonged negative affect and that better sleep may partially buffer these responses. Interpretation will need to consider that ideological self-report does not fully capture satisfaction with specific candidates and that the delayed projection of the 2020 outcome means much of the election window reflects prolonged uncertainty rather than a single post-result day. Support (if any)
Park et al. (Fri,) studied this question.