Classic theories of public opinion suggest that negative shocks can undermine system support in weak democracies, but scant work has systematically assessed this thesis. We identify Peru’s explosive Vacuna-gate scandal as a most-likely case for finding a connection between corruption and political support. The scandal’s unexpected revelation in the middle of the 2021 AmericasBarometer Peru survey created conditions for a natural experiment. Applying an unexpected-event-during-survey design, we consider the consequences of the scandal for perceptions of corruption, system support, and support for democracy. We find robust evidence that the scandal increased even already high perceptions of corruption and lowered system support. Contrary to expectations derived from prior theories, we find no effect on explicit support for democracy. In the conclusion, we discuss the nuanced ways that scandal may shape democratic stability.

Online surveys of public opinion are less expensive and faster to administer than other surveys. However, nonprobability online samples diverge from the gold standard of probabilistic sampling. Although scholars have examined the quality of nonprobability samples in the United States and Europe, we know little about how these samples perform in developing contexts. We use nine online surveys fielded in six Latin American countries to examine the bias in these samples. We also ask whether two common tools that researchers use to mitigate sample bias—post-stratification and sample matching—improve these online samples. We find that online samples in the region exhibit high levels of bias, even in countries where Internet access is widespread. We also find that post-stratification does little to improve sample quality; sample matching outperforms the provider’s standard approach, but the gains are substantively small. This is partly because unequal Internet access and lack of investment in panel recruitment means that providers are unlikely to have enough panelists in lower socioeconomic categories to draw representative online samples, regardless of the sampling method. Researchers who want to draw conclusions about the attitudes or behaviors of the public as a whole in contexts like Latin America still need probability samples.

To what extent has the Argentine party system been polarized along class lines? The political historiography gives mixed and contradictory answers to this question. We explore the social bases of Argentina's political parties using an original database, the most comprehensive database of Argentine elections yet assembled, and new methods of ecological inference that yield more reliable results than previous analyses. We identify two distinct party systems, one in place between 1912 and 1940, the other emerging after 1946. The first party system was not consistently class based, but the second was, with the Radical Party representing the middle classes and the Peronists, workers and the poor. Still, there were important exceptions. Lower-class support for the Peronists, as proxied by literacy rates, declined during Perón's exile, which implies that the party had trouble mobilizing lower-class illiterate voters. Since the return to democracy in 1983, class polarization has again found some expression in the party system.

The conventional wisdom about contemporary Venezuelan politics is that class voting has become commonplace, with the poor doggedly supporting Hugo Chávez while the rich oppose him. This class voting is considered both a new feature of Venezuelan politics and a puzzle given the multiclass bases of prior populist leaders in Latin America. I clarify the concept of class voting by distinguishing between monotonic and nonmonotonic associations between class and vote choice. Using survey data, I find that only in Chávez's first election in 1998 was class voting monotonic. Since then, class voting in Venezuela has been nonmonotonic, with the very wealthiest Venezuelans disproportionately voting against Chávez. At the same time, Chávez's support appears to have increased most among the middle sectors of the income distribution, not the poorest. Finally, I find that whatever effect Chávez may have had on overall turnout, his efforts have not disproportionately mobilized poor voters.

This essay reviews the following works:

Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War. By Ana Arjona. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xxii + 401. $33.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107571594.

Rivalry and Revenge: The Politics of Violence during Civil War. By Laia Balcells. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 285. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107548213.

Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves. By Oliver Kaplan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 360. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316612446.

Electing Peace: From Civil Conflict to Political Participation. By Aila Matanock. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. vii + 320. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316638811.

Mourning Remains: State Atrocity, Exhumations, and Governing the Disappeared in Peru’s Postwar Andes. By Isaias Rojas-Perez. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 330. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781503602625.

Politics after Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru. Edited by Hillel David Soifer and Alberto Vergara. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. Pp. x + 373. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781477317310.

Democracy and Displacement in Colombia’s Civil War. By Abbey Steele. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 264. $49.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781501713736.

Citizens of Memory: Affect, Representation, and Human Rights in Postdictatorship Argentina. By Silvia R. Tandeciarz. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 304. $120.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781611488456.

A growing body of research explores the factors that affect when corrupt politicians are held accountable by voters. Most studies, however, focus on one or few factors in isolation, leaving incomplete our understanding of whether they condition each other. To address this, we embedded rich conjoint candidate choice experiments into surveys in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. We test the importance of two contextual factors thought to mitigate voters’ punishment of corrupt politicians: how widespread corruption is and whether it brings side benefits. Like other scholars, we find that corruption decreases candidate support substantially. But, we also find that information that corruption is widespread does not lessen the sanction applied against corruption, whereas information about the side benefits from corruption does, and does so to a similar degree as the mitigating role of permissible attitudes toward bribery. Moreover, those who stand to gain from these side benefits are less likely to sanction corruption.

Academics and political pundits alike attribute rising support for right-wing political options across advanced democracies to the working classes. In the United States, authors claim that the white working class offered unprecedented and crucial support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. But what is the evidence for this claim? We examine all of the available academic survey data gathered around the election, along with a number of surveys from prior elections. We test four common claims about the white working class in 2016: (1) that most Trump voters were white working-class Americans; (2) that most white working-class voters supported Trump; (3) that unusually large numbers of white working-class voters switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016; and (4) that white working-class voters were pivotal to Trump’s victory in several swing states. We find that three of the four are not supported by the available data, and the other lacks crucial context that casts doubt on the idea that Trump uniquely appealed to working-class Americans. White working-class Americans have been supporting Republican presidential candidates at higher rates in recent elections, but that process long predates 2016, and narratives that center on Trump’s alleged appeal obscure this important long-term trend.

Scholars of representation are increasingly interested in mass–elite congruence—the degree to which the preferences of elected elites mirror those of voters. Yet existing measures of congruence can be misleading because they ignore information in the data, require arbitrary decisions about quantization, and limit researchers to comparing masses and elites on a single dimension. We introduce a new measure of congruence—borrowed from computer science—that addresses all of these problems: the Earth Mover’s Distance (EMD). We demonstrate its conceptual advantages and apply it to two debates in research on mass–elite congruence: ideological congruence in majoritarian and proportional systems and the determinants of congruence across countries in Latin America. We find that improving measurement using the EMD has important implications for inferences regarding both empirical debates. Even beyond studies of congruence, the EMD is a useful and reliable way for political scientists to compare distributions.

In most democracies, lawmakers tend to be vastly better off than the citizens who elect them. Is that because voters prefer more affluent politicians over leaders from working-class backgrounds? In this article, we report the results of candidate choice experiments embedded in surveys in Britain, the United States, and Argentina. Using conjoint designs, we asked voters in these different contexts to choose between two hypothetical candidates, randomly varying several of the candidates’ personal characteristics, including whether they had worked in blue-collar or white-collar jobs. Contrary to the idea that voters prefer affluent politicians, the voters in our experiments viewed hypothetical candidates from the working class as equally qualified, more relatable, and just as likely to get their votes. Voters do not seem to be behind the shortage of working-class politicians. To the contrary, British, American, and Argentine voters seem perfectly willing to cast their ballots for working-class candidates.