How Political Scandals Affect the Electorate. Tracing the Eroding and Spillover Effects of Scandals with a Panel Study

Abstract

Political scandals are highly relevant for political decision‐making and democratic processes more generally. While most prior research employed experimental and cross‐sectional survey studies, we tested the effects of a political scandal in the context of the 2017 Austrian Parliamentary Elections using panel data (N = 559, both waves). Importantly, we used a unique data set collected before and just after a major scandal broke in the final election phase. Drawing on a motivated reasoning perspective, attribution theory, and the inclusion/exclusion model, our results revealed a scandal‐eroding effect particularly damaging a candidate's own base of supporters and leaving followers in disappointment. The findings also showed a negative scandal‐spillover effect for candidate supporters high in scandal knowledge decreasing political trust toward other politicians. Importantly, the results revealed that negative candidate evaluations are not a necessary precondition for negative spillover effects on political trust more generally.