How do voters select candidates when democracy is at stake? Do they consider programmatic positions, valence issues, the opinion of transnational actors and experts, the candidates’ past, or their views on democracy? This paper aims to explore the operating mechanisms of vote choice in presidential elections in problematic democracies. It disentangles the role of candidates’ policy positions, personal histories, approval by domestic and external political actors, as well as sociodemographic attributes. The paper argues that different candidate attributes matter to different types of voters, and the key voter moderator is their cultural liberalism. Culturally more liberal voters are more likely to make electoral choices based on the democratic credentials of candidates. Simultaneously, candidate programs matter when they are congruous with the liberal-conservative outlooks of voters. The empirical analyses combine a conjoint experiment in the Czech Republic with an analysis of survey data from presidential elections in Central and Eastern Europe. The findings yield important insights into voting behaviour in difficult democracies.