Replication Data for: Voting for the Lesser Evil: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in Romania

In many elections around the world, voters choose between politicians who differ not only in personal background and policy promises, but also in their history of dishonest electoral conduct. While recent literature has begun to investigate the conditions under which voters punish electoral malfeasance, we know relatively little about whether they penalize different forms of illicit activities carried out by politicians differently. In this paper, we present the results of a candidate choice experiment embedded in a survey fielded prior to the 2016 Romanian local election. We asked voters to choose between two hypothetical candidates, randomly varying several attributes, including different illicit electoral activities. We find that citizens tolerate some forms of political malfeasance less than others depending on how much that malfeasance infringes on voters’ autonomy. Informational campaigns carried out by prosecutorial agencies also affect how much voters punish different illicit exchanges.

全球诸多选举场景中，选民在候选人之间进行选择时，不仅需要比对政客的个人背景与政策主张，还需考量其过往不诚信的选举行为记录。尽管近年已有学术文献开始探讨选民惩戒选举失当行为的具体情境，但学界对选民是否会针对政客实施的不同类型非法活动施以差异化惩戒，仍所知有限。本研究依托2016年罗马尼亚地方选举前开展的一项调研，嵌入候选人选择实验并报告其实证结果。实验中，我们要求选民在两名虚构候选人之间做出选择，并随机操控包括不同非法选举行为在内的多项属性变量。研究发现，选民对不同类型的政治失当行为的容忍度存在显著差异，该差异取决于该失当行为对选民自主权的侵害程度。检察机关开展的信息宣传活动，同样会影响选民对各类非法选举交易行为的惩戒力度。