Standing By Your (Wo)Man? How Voter Ideology Impacts Party Loyalty in the Face of Corruption Scandals

Are voters of certain ideological persuasion more or less tolerant of political corruption? This study investigates voter tolerance for political corruption as a function of self-identified placement on a right-left spectrum and party identification. We postulate that the relationship between tolerance for corruption (e.g., willingness to continue voting for one’s preferred party despite a corruption scandal) and voter-ideology is ‘U-shaped’. Voters on the ideological extremes (far left, far right) have less alternatives from which to choose and thus are more inclined to stay with their preferred party, despite their involvement with political corruption, while voters toward the ideological center are far less likely to do so, due to more acceptable choices. We test this proposition with a large and recent survey of 85,000 citizens in 24 European countries and even when controlling for individual and country-level factors, we find strong evidence of this ‘U-shaped’ effect.