In the recent national election in April 2018 in Hungary, the incumbent party (Fidesz)
won again.During the campaign period, some of the media were full of stories about
the scandals and corruption affairsof Fidesz. However, election results showed that
these scandals did not decrease incumbent party support.What is the potential explanation
for this? During the election campaign, we conducted an online surveyexperiment in
Hungary, giving different treatments to respondents within the different sub-samples.
Theformer were asked to read an article about a relevant corruption affair connected
to different political actors.Our main hypothesis was that if people hear about scandals
related to the government, support for theincumbent party will decrease. Results of
the fitted logistic regression models suggest that information aboutincumbent-related
corruption scandals did not affect voting for the incumbents. The most interesting
resultwas that dominantly pro-government media consumers were more likely to vote
for Fidesz after treatmentcompared to the control group. We thus think that the selection
of information, the perceived credibilityof sources, and information processing were
influenced by partisanship. In a natural reaction, partisanrespondents recalled their
party identity and tried to respond to questions from the related viewpoints.
