Responding to Major Corruption Scandals: Party Switching and Electoral Outcomes

Many studies seek to explain why voters do not punish corrupt politicians at the polls. The issue is that when corruption is exposed, incumbent politicians and opposition parties do not passively wait for voters to react. Brazil offers a promising context to analyze this problem because, during the 2016 municipal elections, the anti-corruption Lava Jato operation primarily damaged the reputation of the Workers' Party (PT), prompting both PT candidates and their opponents to adopt strategies to minimize losses and maximize gains before voters made their decisions. Using electoral data from 2004 to 2020 and a differences-in-differences model, this research shows that in multiparty systems, candidates from parties whose reputations were damaged by corruption are more likely to switch parties to increase their chances of victory. Indeed, candidates from parties not affected by the scandal received more votes and had greater chances of winning. Moreover, the effect persisted across two elections, spanning 4 years. The implication is that when a party is implicated in major corruption scandals, the damage to its brand is severe and long-lasting, due to both the reactions of its members and the voters.