Do voters care if politicians lie?

Huge numbers of the electorate are now so convinced that politicians only lie that they have not just become cynical, they’ve actually lost any connection to the political process. They don’t follow it, don’t read about it. They say, “Well of course they only lie, so why should I follow it?” (in Eccleston 1998)

Costello and Jaensch point to how some people feel, but it is difficult, from the evidence, to take as jaundiced a view on the majority of the Australian voting population. My contention is that there is little direct support, despite the conventional wisdom of Costello and the other writers referred to above, for the idea that trust in politics really is any lower now than it has been in the past, or that it is a “deal-breaker” at the ballot box.

So to state the obvious - that voters do not trust politicians - is too simplistic a way at looking at perceptions of trust. Many people are disconnected from politics - true - but that does not mean they have given up on it altogether.

The graph below compiles results from three decades of Australian Election Study surveys (McAllister and Clark 2008). It illustrates that voters have, in fact, become more satisfied with democracy in the past 30 years, not less. How can this be reconciled with a notion that voters are trusting their politicians less?

In addition, in regard to the question of trust in government, the AES paints a much brighter picture than much opinion polling, as the graph below shows. Trust in “people in government” (not quite the same thing as “politicians,” granted) scores at around the 40 per cent mark - not quite at rock-bottom levels.

Australian voters are clearly cynical of politics and distrustful of politicians; yet despite their elected members, probably not because of them, voters have a largely positive view of their democracy and the value of their vote. They like things the way they are. It is evident, therefore, that “trust” has different properties and functions in different contexts: voters differentiate between, on one hand, an expectation that politicians will treat the truth expediently with, on the other, an expectation that politicians will deliver services

My view is that voters impose a different kind of morality - different from that which they apply in their personal and family relationships - on politicians because they accept that the stock-in-trade of a successful politician is to lie, or at least avoid the truth, much of the time. Voters do not insist that politicians tell the truth on every detail; rather politicians are judged on their ability to keep promises, or fix problems.

It is not the truth that matters, therefore, it is something else. What voters really want are politicians who are believable and can deliver on promises - those with a vision of where they are going and what they want to achieve: the conviction politician.

Politicians are meant to be different. Those who change their policies to suit the public mood look unprincipled. The most admired politicians stick to their guns, the way Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did. "Conviction politician" is a compliment. Those who adjust their policies to suit the prevailing wind are derided as "flip-floppers". (Skapinker 2008)

Uhr (2007) similarly identifies that it is not necessarily “truthfulness” that is the most important political trait; rather, as he calls it, the “terms of trust” analogous with notions of legitimacy, confidence, respect, credibility and conviction: