Effects of Political Scandal on Voter Evaluation of Politicians

Political scandal is a phenomenon of real or conjectured norm violations that are reported on and framed in the news media. The causes for such events are numerous and vary from greed and lust (for power, money, or sex) to moral bankruptcy, naivety, obsession, obfuscation, and misplaced loyalty or trust. The resulting behavior often is not only embarrassing but also destructive and harmful to democracy. In addition, the media plays a dual role: as a watchdog institution that holds politicians accountable and exposes their mistakes, but also as a “scandal machine” that overlooks serious misdeeds and inflates minor ones.

The present article reviews the state of knowledge on the effects of political scandal, a field that has been studied by numerous studies with different methodological approaches and in various regions worldwide. A systematic search strategy was used to identify and analyze relevant articles. In a meta-analysis, results show that scandals do negatively affect voters’ evaluation of politicians. However, the effects depend on the moderators, such as candidate characteristics, behaviors, and prior attitudes, context, and scandal type.

Further, it appears that the electoral consequences of scandals and corruption incidents are more pronounced in small municipalities than in large ones. The latter may be due to the fact that citizens are more likely to have direct contact with their politicians and thus be able to monitor their performance directly. This may lead to a stronger reliance on accountability and less on type-selection.