Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité... Contaminé? Estimating the impact of French municipal elections on COVID-19 spread in France

On March 15, about 20, 000, 000 voters cast their vote for the first round of the 2020 French municipal elections. We investigate the extent to which this event contributed to the COVID-19 epidemics in France. To this end, we first predict each département's own dynamics using information up to the election to calibrate a standard logistic model. We then take advantage of electoral turnout differences between départements to distinguish the impact of the election on prediction errors in hospitalizations from that of simultaneously implemented anti-contagion policies. We report a detrimental effect of the election in locations that were at relatively advanced stages of the epidemics by the time of the election. In contrast, we show that the election did not contribute to the epidemics in départements with lower infection levels by March 15. All in all, our estimates suggest that elections accounted for about 4, 000 excess hospitalizations by the end of March, which represents 15% of all hospitalizations by this time. They also suggest that holding elections in June may not be as detrimental.