Incumbent accountability is central to retrospective voting, often assessed through changes in vote share and reelection success. However, punishment may reduce incumbents' vote share without crossing the threshold for office turnover, allowing them to achieve reelection nonetheless. Drawing on the 2014 Petrobras scandal and the global oil crisis, which decreased royalty inflows to oil-dependent Brazilian municipalities, I analyze whether economic shocks produce punishment in terms of both vote loss and reduced survival in office. Using a differences-in-differences design, I provide causal evidence that mayoral incumbents lose, on average, 3.2 percentage points of vote share in municipalities that suffered royalty losses, but their likelihood of being removed from power is not altered. I argue that the channel through which incumbents lose votes but not office is an increase in the number of challenger competitors. The economic shock weakens incumbents' perceived advantage, encouraging more challengers to enter the race. The resulting increase in competitors, in turn, disperses anti-incumbent votes across multiple candidacies, making it harder for voters to coordinate behind a single viable alternative. Using post-shock royalty loss as an instrument for competition, I show that each additional challenger reduces the incumbent's vote share by approximately 13.8 percentage points, yet this does not translate into higher rates of office turnover. I further show that the shock increased vote fragmentation in affected municipalities by approximately 0.34 effective candidates. Overall, the study shows that, although voters identify whom to punish in times of shocks, the structure of electoral competition under certain electoral systems hinders the extent to which elections serve as mechanisms of accountability.

To what extent do copartisans overlook corruption in favor of their party? While existing research shows that partisanship can shield politicians from the consequences of corruption, the conditions under which this varies remain unclear. I argue that partisanship's effect on corruption voting depends on whether corruption is targeted (when the corrupt actor belongs to the voter's preferred party) or systemic (when the electorate perceives corruption to be widespread). These contexts activate different processes: biased interpretation and the weakening of partisan identity through broader disillusionment. Using a survey experiment in Brazil and public opinion data from 17 Latin American countries (2008--2018), I find that copartisans are more likely to excuse corruption when their party is implicated. However, as systemic corruption increases, they become more likely to withdraw support and defect to opposition parties. These findings show that copartisans’ tolerance of corruption is conditional and can become fragile under certain circumstances.