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How Political Scandals Affect the Electorate. Tracing the Eroding and Spillover Effects of Scandals with a Panel Study
Author(s) -
Sikorski Christian,
Heiss Raffael,
Matthes Jörg
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12638
Subject(s) - politics , disappointment , context (archaeology) , spillover effect , democracy , political science , panel data , attribution , political economy , positive economics , social psychology , law , sociology , economics , psychology , paleontology , econometrics , biology , microeconomics
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.