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Title: | Moral licence and disbelief: How voters look past political misconduct |
Authors: | Savani, MM Collignon, S |
Keywords: | voting behaviour;misconduct;moral licence;disbelief;thematic analysis |
Issue Date: | 31-Jul-2024 |
Publisher: | Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group) |
Citation: | Savani, M.M. and Collignon, S. (2024) 'Moral licence and disbelief: How voters look past political misconduct', Political Research Exchange, 6 (1), pp. 1 - 17. doi: 10.1080/2474736X.2024.2383409. |
Abstract: | How do voters respond to a co-partisan political candidate after hearing about a serious scandal? We apply qualitative content analysis to open-ended text responses collected from survey respondents, focusing on 159 respondents who remain willing to vote for a hypothetical male candidate after learning that allegations of sexual harassment against him were settled out of court. We uncover two main strategies by which respondents explained and justified their willingness to look past the misconduct allegations. The dominant strategy was to extend moral licence to the candidate based on his prior good deeds; a second prominent strategy was to disbelieve and reject the allegations. Our findings offer new insights on why some political candidates and careers appear untroubled by even serious allegations of misconduct, and frames new research avenues on which voters might be more likely to extend moral licence and in what circumstances. |
Description: | Data availability statement: The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/29465 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2024.2383409 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCiD: Manu M. Savani https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6621-8975 ORCiD: Sofia Collignon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5562-1010 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Social and Political Sciences Research Papers |
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