Citizens do not always penalize corruption and other deceitful political behavior through their voting choices. Extant scholarship points to three types of reasons at the individual level: a) the effect of information asymmetries, b) partisan and other in-group loyalties, and c) side-payments. We focus on one kind of ‘side-payment’, namely policy congruence on climate change mitigation and the polarization generated around positions on climate change mitigation. We use data from a conjoint experiment that asks respondents to assess three pairs of profiles for politicians and then choose one from each pair rating how much they like and how well each profile represents them. The conjoint is embedded in a survey with 13,000 respondents across 10 EU countries conducted in 2024. We focus on the effects of the profile’s deceitful behaviour (none, lying, abusing powers and taking bribes) and their position on climate change mitigation (keep current measures, accelerate measures and slow down measures). We test the following pre-registered core hypotheses: (1) deceitful behaviors have weaker effects on choice when the respondent and profile agree on measures for climate change mitigation; (2) Respondents who display attitudes consistent with climate change concern and are highly polarized against climate skeptics will not penalize deceitful behavior for choice when the politician proposes accelerating measures. (3) Respondents who display attitudes consistent with climate skepticism and climate change denial and are highly polarized against climate skeptics will not penalize deceitful behavior for choice when the politician proposes slowing down measures.