Turnout in the time of corona: evidence from the legislative elections in Korea

Dong-Hee Joe

Applied Economics Letters, 2023, vol. 30, issue 8, 1124-1129

Abstract: This paper reports empirical evidence on the impact of the prevalence of COVID-19 on voter turnout, using the data from the legislative elections in Korea. To control for the time-invariant constituency-specific factors, I regress the first-difference in turnout, i.e. the change from the previous election, on the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per resident. The results show a substantially negative impact. The share of old-age voters, who are known to face worse health risks of COVID-19 infection, amplifies this impact. These findings raise the question whether it is more democratic to hold elections as scheduled, as opposed to postponing them, during a pandemic.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2022.2038773 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to 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:taf:apeclt:v:30:y:2023:i:8:p:1124-1129

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2022.2038773

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().