In this paper we examine the impact of forceful or violent environmental sabotage (FVES) on U.S. elections. We argue that voters see ideological similarities between groups that engage in FVES and other nonviolent environmental organizations, like the Green Party. This means that when an environmentalist organization engages in FVES, it has a negative impact on voter attitudes toward all environmental organizations. Moreover, this negative impact will be stronger if environmentalists had previously made electoral progress, and so they cannot use the excuse that democratic methods had failed and they were forced to turn to FVES. We demonstrate this by showing that when FVES occurs, Green Party candidates tend to win a lower share of the vote in the next election. However, this effect is conditional on the prior electoral history of the Green Party. If the Green Party has a poor electoral record, then sabotage has little effect, but if the Green Party has a better electoral record, then voters are less forgiving of sabotage. We find no evidence that FVES effects Republican or Democratic vote shares. We conclude that different organizations within the same social movement are connected in ways that impact electoral outcomes.

Objective. To test whether political activists who are arrested at a protest will subsequently be more or less able to successfully run for office. Methods. We use a conjoint survey experiment conducted on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. Participants are asked to choose between hypothetical candidates, with a protest arrest randomly added to the description of one candidate. We also vary the group that organized the protest, the demographics of the candidate, how much time has passed since the protest, and the seriousness of the arrest charge. Results. We find left-leaning voters can see a protest arrest as an asset, if it occurred at a left-wing protest. Right-leaning voters are less tolerant of protest arrests though, especially if the candidate is black or if the protest was recent. Conclusion. We conclude that activists with electoral ambitions should weigh the risks of arrest carefully, especially if they are black or will need to appeal to right-leaning electorates. Arrests are common at U.S. protests. But although this risk is often discussed in protestor "know your rights" trainings, the long-term impacts of getting arrested at a protestwhich may vary across race and gender-are uncertain (

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