Red Pill or Blue Pill? Selective Information Exposure and the Electoral Punishment of Corruption

Citizens are expected to hold corrupt politicians accountable. However, while observational studies and field experiments often find corrupt politicians re-elected, survey experiments show that citizens are unlikely to vote for corrupt candidates. This contradiction may arise because previous studies have not accounted for how citizens navigate political information in the real world. In this paper, we propose a model of corruption accountability that considers how citizens selectively engage with political information. We test this model using a PICA experimental design fielded in Spain. The results indicate that information selection can explain the limited consequences of corruption scandals, as not all citizens expose themselves to corruption information, and their likelihood to hold corrupt politicians accountable depends on their information preferences. These findings suggest corruption accountability may be increased not by informing those who select out of counter-attitudinal information, but by reaching inattentive citizens generally not exposed to political information.