Political scandals, as transgressions, should inherently provide voters with negative information about a politician and create conditions for electoral sanction. Yet the case of Petras Gražulis suggests a more complex pattern: despite the repeated circulation of scandalous stories about this politician in the national media, he has been elected to the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania seven times, including five victories in a single-member constituency. This prompted a closer examination of how voters who repeatedly supported him in a single-member constituency experience and make sense of his scandalous behaviour, his media representation, and his constituency service. The study employs a phenomenographic approach. Between 2020 and 2023, researchers conducted 28 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with long-term supporters of the politician from 15 polling districts. The findings show that, although scandals are clearly recognized as part of Gražulis’s political image, they are not automatically translated into an overall negative assessment of the politician or into a reason to withdraw electoral support. The outcome space shows that in cases when constituency service is evaluated highly positively based on direct, authentic personal experience, a mediated scandal may be seen as relatively insignificant, insufficiently substantiated, or disproportionately amplified through repeated media coverage. Repeatedly voting for a scandal-prone politician therefore does not necessarily imply disregard for political information or irrationality. Rather, constituency service provides an interpretive context in which voters assess other, potentially negative, scandal-related information about the politician.
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