Research increasingly documents a puzzling pattern: voters who profess strong democratic commitments nonetheless tolerate or even endorse undemocratic behavior by their preferred incumbents. Explanations typically highlight partisanship, policy congruence, or divergent understandings of what “democracy” entails. Yet we still know relatively little about how voters use cues from parties and external information sources when evaluating democratic transgressions. This study addresses this gap through a set of survey experiments conducted in Slovakia, a context marked by intense polarization and recurring concerns over democratic backsliding. The experiments examine how external actors’ reactions—either criticism or justification of incumbent transgressions—shape citizens’ acceptance of democratic violations. Crucially, we assess whether these reactions interact with citizens’ underlying conceptions of democracy, distinguishing between electoral, liberal, and majoritarian understandings.