IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/metaar/sxajv.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The COVID-19 Pandemic and US Presidential Elections

Author

Listed:
  • Brodeur, Abel
  • Baccini, Leonardo
  • Weymouth, Stephen

Abstract

What is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 U.S. presidential election? Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we estimate the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths on the change in county-level voting for Donald Trump between 2016 and 2020. To account for potential confounders, we include a large number of COVID-19-related controls as well as demographic and socioeconomic variables. Moreover, we instrument the numbers of cases and deaths with the share of workers employed in meat-processing factories to sharpen our identification strategy. We find that COVID-19 cases negatively affected Trump's vote share. The estimated effect appears strongest in urban counties, in swing states, and in states that Trump won in 2016. A simple counterfactual analysis suggests that Trump would likely have won re-election if COVID-19 cases had been 5 percent lower. Our paper contributes to the literature of retrospective voting and demonstrates that voters hold leaders accountable for their (mis-)handling of negative shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Brodeur, Abel & Baccini, Leonardo & Weymouth, Stephen, 2020. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and US Presidential Elections," MetaArXiv sxajv, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:metaar:sxajv
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/sxajv
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5faad5316a1ea7000cf7f4d3/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/sxajv?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Weber, Michael, 2020. "Labor Markets During the Covid-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt7rx7t91p, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    2. Scott R Baker & Robert A Farrokhnia & Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel & Constantine Yannelis & Jeffrey Pontiff, 0. "How Does Household Spending Respond to an Epidemic? Consumption during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 834-862.
    3. Kinder, Donald R. & Kiewiet, D. Roderick, 1981. "Sociotropic Politics: The American Case," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 129-161, April.
    4. David Autor & David Dorn & Gordon Hanson & Kaveh Majlesi, 2020. "Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(10), pages 3139-3183, October.
    5. Margalit, Yotam, 2013. "Explaining Social Policy Preferences: Evidence from the Great Recession," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 107(1), pages 80-103, February.
    6. Béland, Louis-Philippe & Brodeur, Abel & Wright, Taylor, 2020. "The Short-Term Economic Consequences of COVID-19: Exposure to Disease, Remote Work and Government Response," IZA Discussion Papers 13159, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Raj Chetty & John N Friedman & Michael Stepner & Opportunity Insights Team & Camille Baker & Harvey Barnhard & Matt Bell & Gregory Bruich & Tina Chelidze & Lucas Chu & Westley Cineus & Sebi Devlin-Fol, 2024. "The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(2), pages 829-889.
    8. Allcott, Hunt & Boxell, Levi & Conway, Jacob & Gentzkow, Matthew & Thaler, Michael & Yang, David, 2020. "Polarization and public health: Partisan differences in social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    9. Abney, F. Glenn & Hill, Larry B., 1966. "Natural Disasters as a Political Variable: The Effect of a Hurricane on an Urban Election," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(4), pages 974-981, December.
    10. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Neiman, Brent, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    11. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    12. Abel Brodeur & Nikolai Cook & Anthony Heyes, 2020. "Methods Matter: p-Hacking and Publication Bias in Causal Analysis in Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3634-3660, November.
    13. Gerber, Alan & Malhotra, Neil, 2008. "Do Statistical Reporting Standards Affect What Is Published? Publication Bias in Two Leading Political Science Journals," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 3(3), pages 313-326, October.
    14. Mo, Cecilia Hyunjung & Conn, Katharine M., 2018. "When Do the Advantaged See the Disadvantages of Others? A Quasi-Experimental Study of National Service," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(4), pages 721-741, November.
    15. Anton Gollwitzer & Cameron Martel & William J. Brady & Philip Pärnamets & Isaac G. Freedman & Eric D. Knowles & Jay J. Van Bavel, 2020. "Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1186-1197, November.
    16. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    17. Paola Giuliano & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2014. "Growing up in a Recession," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(2), pages 787-817.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leonardo Baccini & Abel Brodeur & Stephen Weymouth, 2021. "The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US presidential election," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 739-767, April.
    2. Brodeur, Abel & Cook, Nikolai & Wright, Taylor, 2021. "On the effects of COVID-19 safer-at-home policies on social distancing, car crashes and pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    3. Beland, Louis-Philippe & Brodeur, Abel & Wright, Taylor, 2020. "COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data," GLO Discussion Paper Series 559, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    4. Hamish Low & Michaela Benzeval & Jon Burton & Thomas F. Crossley & Paul Fisher & Annette Jäckle & Brendan Read, 2020. "The Idiosyncratic Impact of an Aggregate Shock The Distributional Consequences of COVID-19," Economics Series Working Papers 911, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    6. Granja, João & Makridis, Christos & Yannelis, Constantine & Zwick, Eric, 2022. "Did the paycheck protection program hit the target?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 725-761.
    7. Arceo-Gomez, Eva O. & Campos-Vazquez, Raymundo M. & Esquivel, Gerardo & Alcaraz, Eduardo & Martinez, Luis A. & Lopez, Norma G., 2023. "The impact of COVID-19 infection on labor outcomes of Mexican formal workers," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    8. Adams-Prassl, Abi & Boneva, Teodora & Golin, Marta & Rauh, Christopher, 2020. "Inequality in the impact of the coronavirus shock: Evidence from real time surveys," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    9. Oikonomou, Myrto & Pierri, Nicola & Timmer, Yannick, 2023. "IT shields: Technology adoption and economic resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    10. Rees-Jones, Alex & D’Attoma, John & Piolatto, Amedeo & Salvadori, Luca, 2022. "Experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and support for safety-net expansion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1090-1104.
    11. Diane Alexander & Ezra Karger, 2023. "Do Stay-at-Home Orders Cause People to Stay at Home? Effects of Stay-at-Home Orders on Consumer Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(4), pages 1017-1027, July.
    12. Frank Crowley & Justin Doran, 2020. "COVID‐19, occupational social distancing and remote working potential: An occupation, sector and regional perspective," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(6), pages 1211-1234, December.
    13. Di Bartolomeo, Giovanni & D'Imperio, Paolo & Felici, Francesco, 2022. "The fiscal response to the Italian COVID-19 crisis: A counterfactual analysis," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    14. Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou, 2022. "The Political Economy of Populism," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 753-832, September.
    15. Hai-Anh H. Dang & Long T. Giang & Minh N. N. Do, 2021. "Building on Vietnam’s Recent COVID-19 Success: A Job-Focused Analysis of Individual Assessments on Their Finance and the Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-21, September.
    16. Nicholas Bloom & Philip Bunn & Paul Mizen & Pawel Smietanka & Gregory Thwaites, 2020. "The Impact of Covid-19 on Productivity," NBER Working Papers 28233, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Kong, Edward & Prinz, Daniel, 2020. "Disentangling policy effects using proxy data: Which shutdown policies affected unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    18. Jin, Olivia & Pyle, William, 2023. "Labor market hardships and preferences for public sector employment and employers: Evidence from Russia," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 577-591.
    19. Sumedha Gupta & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2020. "Mandated and Voluntary Social Distancing During The COVID-19 Epidemic: A Review," NBER Working Papers 28139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Shibata, Ippei, 2021. "The distributional impact of recessions: The global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic recession," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:metaar:sxajv. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.