Do Partisanship and Policy Agreement Make Citizens Tolerate Undemocratic Behavior?

Do voters tolerate undemocratic behavior by politicians with whom they share partisanship or policy preferences? I answer this question employing conjoint experiments in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Mexico, and South Korea. Theoretically, I distinguish between a hypothesis based on social psychological partisan attachments and Downsian hypotheses based on spatial policy preferences. In all five countries, I find that partisanship does not suppress the negative effects of undemocratic behavior on voting intentions, whereas policy agreement between voters and candidates even increases punishment of undemocratic behavior. However, partisanship has much stronger direct influences on voting intentions than policy agreement and especially undemocratic behavior. The findings suggest that voters have a harder time setting aside their partisan attachments than their policy preferences for democracy. But most importantly, citizens are not completely blinded by either partisanship or policy agreement when facing undemocratic politicians.