Earlier literature mostly considered programmatic linkages based on policy promises and clientelistic politics as two separate dimensions/ factors affecting voting behavior. Yet, we know that partisanship affects how voters evaluate policies and is related to distributive politics. Therefore, partisanship, being part of a clientelistic network, and support for the patron’s policies seem to be part of a bundle that goes together. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, earlier studies have not tested whether policy support is endogenous to clientelistic politics. In this paper, we argue that voters who believe that they are (economically) dependent on the social assistance distributed by the state would be more inclined to evaluate more positively a policy when they know that it is supported by the incumbent party. Similar to the earlier findings on partisans, they would want to avoid cognitive resonance. Since they are concerned about losing the valuable economic benefits and prefer to vote for the incumbent in order not to lose these benefits, they convince themselves that policies promoted by the incumbent are favorable, too. We test this expectation with data from a face-to-face survey conducted with a probability sample prior to the 2023 general elections in Turkey. We examine a non-salient policy area – nuclear energy. We conduct a list experiment to be able to identify the voters who base their voting decision based on the fear of losing social assistance. We indeed find that those who take into account the possibility of losing their social assistance when voting change their nuclear policy position towards the position of the incumbent party.
