Citizen Trust, Political Corruption, and Voting Behavior: Connecting the Dots

This article is an empirical examination of the nexus among citizens' confidence in their government's ability to solve problems, political corruption, and voting behavior at the state level. After controlling for individual characteristics, political ideology and party, and government performance and management, the identified model (Integrated Corruption-Confidence-Voting Behavior Model) was partially confirmed. That is, citizens had less confidence in their government's ability to solve problems when they believed that the state was becoming more corrupt, and citizens were less likely to vote when they perceived corruption as increasing. However, citizens were not more likely to vote when they had more confidence in their government's problem-solving ability. The implications of these results are discussed in the article.