Political Scandals Do Not Scare Party Supporters Away–Empirical Evidence from An Interrupted Time-Series Design and Break Point Detection

Do non-corruption scandals alone affect parties’ support rate? Although there have been several studies over the years, our understanding regarding political scandals is still limited. This limitation comes from both theoretical and empirical issues. Using three cases from the U.K. and Germany and an interrupted time-series design with break point detection, the findings of this paper demonstrate one key conclusion: party supporters do not revoke their support for parties when high-profile party leaders are involved in non-corruption scandals. Even in the highly salient cases tested, the analysis shows that the selected scandals do not diminish the support they enjoy. This project makes two contributions to the literature. First, it extends our understanding to include non-corruption scandals and the analysis at the party level, which have been downplayed in the literature. Secondly, the design of this paper provides future researchers guidelines for examining causal mechanisms using time-series data.

Keywords: non-corruption scandals; character-based values; interrupted time-series design; break point detection

Papers, data, and replication codes could be reached here.(Paper, Data, R-Codes, GAUSS-Codes)