Replication Data for: The Flipside of Flip-Flopping: Leader Inconsistency, Citizen Preferences and the War in Iraq

In recent years the term “flip-flopper” has become increasingly prominent.
Politicians employ the term in an attempt to make their opponents look
unattractive to voters. The question of whether this tactic works, however,
remains unanswered. Existing research demonstrates that citizens do not
like inconsistency as a matter of principle, but we know little about its
effects in practice. In this paper I conduct an experiment that allows me to
ascertain the effect of a leader’s inconsistency on citizens’ assessments.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I find that citizens do not always
react negatively to a leader who changes his position. Instead, they are
generally indifferent between a consistent and an inconsistent politician
provided that the leader supports the citizen’s preferred policy in the
current time period