CHECKS AND CHOICES - THE HOUSE BANK SCANDALS IMPACT ON VOTERS IN 1992

Analysis of the 1992 American National Election Study (ANES) data indi cates that the House bank scandal reduced the vote for House incumbent s by approximately five percentage points. The scandal mainly affected the small subset of voters who were most offended by bank overdrafts and who did not assume that their representative had a clean record. F ortunately for members who had written bad checks, voters who knew abo ut the transgression were least disposed to be outraged by it, while t he voters most disposed to outrage were also most inclined to believe the guilty were innocent. The explanation for these curious patterns i s that voters who faced the option of condemning an incumbent they oth erwise appreciated or dismissing the offense as inconsequential often chose the latter course. The damage was also moderated by partisanship ; voters of the incumbent's party showed a strong tendency to err in t he incumbent's favor in assessing involvement in the scandal. The clas sical theory of cognitive dissonance readily explains both phenomena.