Turning a blind eye on the black sheep: when are voters loyal to corrupt politicians?

Abstract

When do voters turn a blind eye on corrupt politicians? Recent research suggests that voters might be willing to support corrupt politicians due to a lack of a ‘viable and clean alternative,’ i.e., voters prefer supporting a corrupt politician when the alternative is to support a politician who takes a fundamentally different policy stance. Following this argument, it has also been argued that especially corrupt politicians from radical parties are less likely to be punished by their voters as these voters are more hostile toward other parties. In other words, voters of radical parties are more likely to lack viable alternatives. Based on a survey experiment conducted in Germany, we put these hypotheses to an empirical test. We find evidence for the expected patterns. Supporters of radical parties are indeed less likely to switch their vote to a different party. However, our experiment also shows that this is because voters of radical parties are more likely to lack a viable alternative. When supporters of radical parties evaluate a clean alternative favorable, they are just as likely as voters of mainstream parties to switch away from the corrupt candidate. Finally, we show how strengths of partisan attachment affect voting for corrupt candidates.