Corrupt Politicians and Their Electoral Support: Some Experimental Observations

This paper concerns the relationship between voters and corrupt politicians. An explanation is suggested for why voters would discount even credible information that a candidate is corrupt. Then the results of an experiment designed to test a necessary condition in this explanation are reported. The principal implication of this exploratory study is that corrupt elected officials are immune from electoral reprisal because voters rather easily trade off the information that a candidate is corrupt in return for other things they value in the candidate.