Why voters (sometimes) punish repression

Abstract

How does repression influence democratic leaders’ performance in elections? When weighing rights protections against other issues, I expect voters to punish candidates who advocate repression of in-group members but reward candidates who support repression of threatening out-groups. I evaluate the causal effect of repression on vote share using a conjoint experiment among registered voters in the United States. I find that, among those who identify as an in-group with a frequent repression victim, Black Lives Matter (BLM), candidates receive a lower vote share when they support repression of BLM or violent repression against other groups. There is also some evidence that candidates perform worse when they support repression of groups that share a racial identity with the respondent and that threat perception moderates the effect of repression on candidates’ performance. On the other hand, repression typically has an insignificant effect on candidates’ vote share when it is perpetrated against a respondent’s out-group. These results provide important insight to voters’ evaluation of repression at the ballot box.