Red, Blue, and Going for Gold: Partisan Support for Olympic Host Bids

Abstract

Recent opposition to Olympic bids in American cities underscores some residents’ disapproval of their cities hosting mega-events. In this study, I test whether partisanship plays a role in residents’ support for a local Olympics bid using survey data from Houston, Texas in 2001 and Colorado statewide surveys from 2022 and 2023. I find that Republicans and conservatives were indeed less supportive of using public funds for the Houston 2012 bid. However, the Colorado 2022 survey indicates Republicans were more supportive of Denver entering a host bid. To test whether explicitly priming residents to consider public spending activates partisanship, respondents of the 2023 Colorado survey received one of two versions of the Olympics bid question, the second of which explicitly mentions spending public funds to win a bid. Results demonstrate that interacting partisanship with the public spending treatment indeed leads to less support for such projects, particularly among Republicans and independents.