EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Leonardo Baccini, Abel Brodeur and Stephen Weymouth

No 710 [pre.], GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

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 so- cioeconomic 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 ur- ban counties, in states without stay-at-home orders, 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. We also find some evidence that the COVID-19 incidence had a positive effect on voters' mobilization, helping Biden win the presidency.

Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; elections; political behavior; pre-analysis plan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/228452/1/GLO-DP-0710pre.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US presidential election (2021) Downloads
Working Paper: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election (2020) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:710pre

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (econstor@zbw-workspace.eu).

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:710pre