Are citizens willing to compromise their civil liberties in pursuit of salient policy objectives? We tackle this question in the context of the 2021 migration crisis on the Poland-Belarus border. To curb migrant flows, Poland introduced a state of emergency, infringing on citizens’ democratic freedoms. This registered report exploits the highly localized nature of these restrictions to investigate their electoral consequences, drawing on 2019 and 2023 parliamentary elections. Using a difference-in-discontinuities design, we do not find evidence that voters punished the incumbent Law and Justice (PiS) for restricting their civil liberties. While equivalence tests rule out a positive effect, anti-incumbent effects smaller than approximately 3-4 pp. cannot be completely dismissed. These results are consistent with the notion that voters may tolerate (though not reward) substantial infringements on civil liberties in return for decisive action on salient issues, providing one explanation for the growing use of strongman policies in democracies worldwide.