<p>As the fight against corruption stagnates worldwide, individual factors underlying support for unethical leaders remain understudied. The influence of partisan identity on tolerance of political transgressions has yielded inconsistent results. On the contrary, recent studies highlight the importance of moral concerns in the evaluation of political misdeeds. We use a novel method to disentangle two forms of moral reasoning: partisan moral reasoning (PMR) – a measure of leniency towards in-party misconduct— and tight moral reasoning (TMR) –a measure reflecting general rejection towards political transgressions, regardless of who performs them. In a first exploratory study with U.S. Democrats and Republicans, we found that PMR and TMR predict intention to vote for a corrupt in-party politician beyond previously developed measures of morality and partisan identity. In a second experimental study we further examined these constructs as two distinct forms of moral reasoning. We found that time delay modified the influence of TMR on vote intention but had no effect on PMR. Our findings suggest that PMR may be product of reflection and is therefore unaffected by deliberation time. Additionally, the effect of our experimental condition on TMR preliminarily indicates that trying to influence citizens by inhibiting moral disengagement may be more effective than trying to reduce political bias by promoting reflection. In a global context where democracies seem to be losing the fight against corruption, it is essential to explore the individual factors and the circumstances that underlie corruption tolerance in order to design informed public policies and interventions.</p>