Poster Division: Social and Behavioral Sciences: 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)American government takes the approach that highly competitive practices, such as elections, are the best way to represent the will of voters. However, in an era of hyper-partisanship and high negative out-party affect, it is worth examining the negative effects that salient partisan competition has on people's attitudes. Specifically, I find that when partisans perceive elections to be "neck and neck" (i.e., partisan competition is salient), they tolerate co-partisan electoral cheating while harshly enforcing rules when their opposing political party engages in the same election cheating.
Using an original survey experiment, I investigate the effects of salient partisan competition on people's tolerance of election cheating and endorsement of political norms and values of fairness. After manipulating salience of partisan competition, I measured participants' tolerance of election cheating that fosters an electoral advantage to either (randomly assigned) their in-party or out-party as well as measuring participants' endorsement of democratic values of fairness. Although partisans selectively tolerate election cheating depending on which party benefits when partisan competition is not salient, I find that greater salience of partisan competition increases participants' tolerance of election cheating when their their in-party stands to benefit and decreases participants' tolerance of election cheating when their their out-party stands to benefit. Conversely, I do not find that salience of partisan competition affects people's endorsement of political values of fairness despite this differing effect of tolerance of cheating by party benefit.
I discuss these findings in the context of democratic government and the connection to modern partisan animus. These results have important implications regarding democratic health as partisans are not willing to apply democratic norms of fairness under competitive circumstances. Last, I conclude with a discussion of democratic governmental structure and how changes representative democracies could reduce partisan conflict and double standards.No embarg
