The Virus of Fear: The Political Impact of Ebola in the United States

Filipe Campante, Emilio Depetris-Chauvin and Ruben Durante

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2024, vol. 16, issue 1, 480-509

Abstract: We study how public anxiety over the threat of a disease outbreak can affect voter behavior by looking at the Ebola scare that hit the United States in 2014. Exploiting timing and locations of the four cases diagnosed in the country, we show that heightened concern about Ebola led to a lower Democratic vote share and lower turnout, despite no evidence of a general anti-incumbent effect (including President Obama). Voters displayed increasingly conservative attitudes on immigration, but not on other ideologically charged issues. Our findings indicate that emotional reactions can have a strong electoral impact, mediated by issues plausibly associated with the specific triggering factor.

JEL-codes: D72 D91 I12 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20220030 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20220030.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20220030.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:aejapp:v:16:y:2024:i:1:p:480-509

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/app.20220030

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().