Why do voters elect criminal politicians?

Abstract

Voters across the world are often complicit in electing bad-quality legislators to political office. This problem is particularly salient in India, where candidates accused of criminality often succeed at the polls. Why do voters show a willingness to cast their ballots for candidates accused of wrongdoing? Using primary individual-level voter survey data from the Bihar 2020 state assembly elections, this paper examines whether ethnic voting can explain this surprising voter behavior. Contrary to voter preference theory, I find that voters exhibit a stronger negative response to candidates accused of criminality when they belong to their preferred ethnic party. Voter support for the non-ethnic falls by 89.2% for violent charges. Coethnicity further reduces electoral support by 67% for violent criminals. This pattern holds regardless of the voters’ level of news consumption, political knowledge, education status, and income. These findings suggest that the electoral success of criminal politicians could be attributed to other factors such as a lack of proper institutions or lower state capacity rather than the voters’ underlying ethnic preferences.