Voters don't care how much an autocrat ruins democracy—they only get mad if they can actually see them doing it.
Analyzing 105 elections, researchers found that the 'scope' of democratic erosion (how many institutions are undermined) has no impact on whether an incumbent is defeated. Only the 'visibility' of those attacks—how easily they are perceived as undemocratic—triggers an electoral backlash.
When Do Autocratizing Incumbents Lose Elections?
SocArXiv · axm3p_v5
When do electorates remove incumbents who undermine democracy? Existing research explains why voters tolerate autocratizing leaders, but we know less about when they hold them accountable. We develop a framework of electoral accountability under autocratization to evaluate when attacks on democracy trigger electoral backlash, considering the scope of autocratization (i.e., the breadth of institutional erosion) and its visibility (i.e., the extent to which these actions are clearly legible as und