Who Has Room for Error? An Exploration of Voter Accountability and Non-Traditional Candidates * Akhil Rajan † Christina Pao ‡ June 2020 ABSTRACT: It is well established that voters often hold politicians accountable for misbehavior. But are non-traditional (Black, gay, and/or female) candidates held to higher standards? Using a vi- gnette experiment (N≈4,000), we test this question of differential treatment. While we find evidence of outright discrimination, particularly against gay candidates, no evidence of greater penalties for norm violation (corruption or extramarital affairs) emerges. In what we term the “Room for Error Hypoth- esis,” our findings suggest that—though barrier-breaking candidates do not necessarily face stiffer electoral sanctions—they are less able to withstand even diminished penalties given lower baseline support. Further, we hypothesize that gay candidates received lessened penalties from Republicans when charged with norm violation due to “counter-stereotypic” effects: since norm violations send a signal of candidate conservatism to Republicans, this traditionally “negative” candidate quality works to counteract the perception of non-traditional candidates as liberal. * The authors thank Andy Guess, Don Green, Frances Rosenbluth, Peter Aronow, Fredrik Savje, Trevor Incerti, Angele Delevoye, and Cleo O’Brien-Udry for helpful feedback. We especially thank Josh Kalla for his help with this project at all stages. † BA/MA Candidate, Yale University ‡ M.Phil Candidate, University of Oxford 1