Living meta-analysis dashboard on how voters punish politicians who break democratic rules

Voters are shown two similar candidates, one of whom has broken a democratic rule, and pick one. This page pools 13 such experiments covering 47,700 people in 13 democracies: how often do voters reject the rule-breaker, and does it matter whether the rule-breaker is from their own party?

The data

Every number here is recomputed from the studies’ own respondent-level files, not copied from a published table. Each study randomized 3 to 9 candidate features, 1 to 6 of them about democratic rules, and is reduced to one quantity: among pairs where exactly one candidate breaks a rule, the share choosing the other one. That share is pooled across countries and samples in a multilevel random-effects model.

• All 13 studies, 20 country samples, feed the overall rate.
• 8 record respondents’ party; 4 field own-party contests, which is what the loyalty comparison needs. The rest show only the cross-party case.
• Online quota panels, not probability samples; no representativeness audits were released.
• Demographics appear below only where the released files contain them.
• Hypothetical candidates, not ballots: an upper bound on real-world punishment.

Coverage

A sample is one country within one study. Both samples coded “SK” in the raw files are South Korea, not Slovakia, so the pool covers 13 democracies rather than 14.

Country by country

Each dot is one country in one study. In all 13 democracies the share rejecting the rule-breaker sits above half, from 53% to 73%. The line marks the pooled average of 61%; the dashed line at 50% is a coin flip.

Bars are 95% confidence intervals.

Which kinds of rule-breaking cost the most

Each dot is how far a candidate’s support falls when they take the action instead of respecting the rule.

• Measured in several studies
• From a single study, so read with more caution

From the five studies that report each action separately. Closely related acts are grouped under one label; bars are 95% confidence intervals.

The price of party loyalty

The hard test is when the rule-breaker is from your own party, so punishing them means voting for the rival. Pooled, rejection falls from 59% when loyalty is not at stake to 38% when it is, a drop of about 21 points.

• Loyalty not at stake: both candidates share the voter’s party
• Crossing party lines: the rule-breaker is the voter’s own party

Each row is one country in one study; the gap between the dots is the price of party loyalty.

By party

Supporters of some parties barely waver; others drop their defense of democratic rules by 30-40 points once their own side is breaking them.

One row per party’s supporters (22 in all). Bars are 95% confidence intervals; rows crossing zero show no measurable penalty.

Over time

Each point pools every study fielded through that year. The estimate is shaky at first and settles close to 61% as studies accumulate.

Bars are 95% confidence intervals; the dashed line is today’s pooled average.

The studies

Click a row for the design, the respondents, the ways a candidate could break democratic rules, and the share who rejected the rule-breaker.

Year is when the survey was run; People counts respondents in the released data, within country; Features is how many candidate characteristics were randomized. Studies marked ⓘ enter the party-loyalty analysis.

A living dashboard: new candidate-choice experiments are added as they appear. If you have run one that fits, email marc.jacob@nd.edu.