Tolerating Scandal

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Oppo is part of the story.But scandal does not cut the way it used to.

Erin Doherty at POLITICO:

Americans are largely tolerant of scandals among politicians. But nobody is more willing to stick by an embattled candidate than a MAGA voter.

The POLITICO Poll finds President Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters are the most loyal of any group of voters — with majorities saying they would stick by GOP candidates confronted with an array of scandals, from a DUI conviction or accepting lobbyist gifts to more serious accusations including domestic violence, sexual assault and antisemitic social media posts.

Two-thirds of self-identified MAGA Trump voters say they would continue supporting a GOP candidate accused of sexual assault — 13 percentage points higher than the share of Trump 2024 voters writ large, which include those who do not identify as MAGA. By comparison, 40 percent of voters who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 would continue backing a Democratic candidate accused of sexual assault.

This article is part of an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas.


Seventy-two percent of MAGA Trump voters say they would stick with a GOP candidate accused of domestic violence, more than 10 percentage points higher than the overall share of Trump 2024 voters who would back a GOP candidate (61 percent). Thirty-nine percent of Harris voters say they’d stick with a Democrat accused of domestic violence.