Partisan forgiveness of political leadership in the 2024 UK general election: Are there limits to transgression credit?

Transgression credit is the willingness to accept errant ingroup leadership and may explain why groups allow their leaders to engage in extreme, reckless or corrupt actions. We examined one form of transgression credit—forgiveness, toward political leaders in the 2024 UK General Election. A longitudinal study tested two competing hypotheses: that voters would show ‘transgression credit’ by being more willing to forgive their own leader compared to outgroup leaders (i.e. ingroup bias) or conversely that they would be less tolerant (i.e. showing a black sheep effect). Consistent with transgression credit, we found that voters for the four main parties (N = 535), Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Reform UK, were all more willing to forgive trust violations of their own leaders, and all were more forgiving following than before the election. Only the Reform UK’s leader (a self-declared anti-establishment figure) was not granted greater forgiveness after the election. We also found that pre-election trust was associated with increased post-election forgiveness of outgroup, but not ingroup, leaders. Party identification was negatively associated with forgiveness of outgroup leaders and national identification—conceived here as a form of superordinate identity—positively. We consider implications for accountability and maintenance of high standards of political conduct.