Young Voters Less Likely to Punish Undemocratic Candidates

What the Paper Asks

Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen asks whether younger citizens are less likely than older citizens to punish undemocratic political behavior—measured as voters' willingness to withhold support from candidates who act against democratic norms. The question speaks directly to debates about generational commitment to democracy and the resilience of democratic accountability.

How the Question Is Tested

The paper pools experimental data from five studies covering ten countries and seventeen unique country-year samples. The empirical design includes four conjoint experiments and one vignette experiment that manipulate candidate behavior and measure respondents' voting intentions. This setup allows estimation of an interaction between candidate undemocratic behavior and respondent age on the likelihood of supporting a candidate.

Key Findings

• In every study and in almost all country samples, the interaction between undemocratic behavior and age is negative: punishment of undemocratic behavior rises with age.
• The age–punishment relationship is approximately linear across the age range examined.
• The negative interaction is statistically significant in the pooled sample and in most individual studies, indicating a robust pattern across diverse contexts.

What This Means

The findings imply that younger people, on average, are less likely than older people to sanction candidates who display undemocratic behavior when deciding whom to support. This result refines the literature on generational differences in democratic commitment by using experimental evidence on voting intentions rather than attitudinal measures alone.

Implications for Scholars and Practitioners

These results matter for scholars interested in democratic accountability, political socialization, and electoral behavior, and for practitioners concerned with the long-term enforcement of democratic norms. The paper provides one of the most comprehensive empirical tests to date of age differences in punishment of undemocratic behavior, using experimental methods that enhance causal leverage across multiple countries.