The Impact of COVID-19, Election Policies, and Partisanship on Voter Participation in the 2020 U.S. Election

The COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to wreak havoc on elections. Democracies initiated varied policies to minimize health risks to voters and election workers. This study assesses the impact of voting policies, personal exposure to COVID, and partisanship on voter behavior in the 2020 U.S. general election. Using a comparative state-politics approach and new data, we demonstrate that exposure to COVID substantially influenced voter turnout, and election policies had a major effect on whether a voter cast a ballot by mail, early in-person, or in-person on Election Day. Unique circumstances, including the emergence of voting policies as a polarizing issue, also spawned a new partisan voting gap that is especially prominent among heavy news consumers. Compared to 2018, many more Democrats than Republicans abandoned Election Day voting in favor of mail voting.

Healthy citizens, healthy democracies? A review of the literature

A growing literature over the past 10 years on health and political behavior has established health status as an important source of political inequality. Poor health reduces psychological engagement with politics and discourages political activity. This lowers incentives for governments to respond to the needs of those experiencing ill health and thereby perpetuates health disparities. In this review article, we provide a critical synthesis of the state of knowledge on the links between different aspects of health and political behavior. We also discuss the challenges confronting this research agenda, particularly with respect to measurement, theory, and establishing causality, along with suggestions for advancing the field. With the COVID-19 pandemic casting health disparities into sharp focus, understanding the sources of health biases in the political process, as well as their implications, is an important task that can bring us closer to the ideals of inclusive democracy.

Nonlinear impacts of political and religious factors on COVID-19 vaccination

We investigate whether COVID-19 vaccination is monotonically associated with political and religious orientations. Conspiracy theories among politically conservative groups and Evangelical Protestants have drawn considerable attention to COVID-19 vaccination. Previous research indicates that political and religious orientations can have either positive or negative effects on vaccination. We employ non-linear regression with data on Republican turnout and Protestantism in over 2,000 US counties. Our findings reveal that the relationships between COVID-19 vaccination and Republican and Evangelical Protestant inclinations follow an inverted-U shape. Furthermore, Protestant inclination has a less negative impact on COVID-19 vaccination when infection rates are high. For vaccination promotion, targeting segmented groups is preferable to solely targeting based on political and religious affiliations.

Race, poverty and unemployment as quantitative predictors of voter turnout in St. Louis amidst COVID-19 and a racial justice movement

PurposeThe 2020 election season brought with it a global public health pandemic and a reenergized racial justice movement. Given the social context of the intertwined pandemics of COVID-19 and racialized violence, do the traditional predictors of voter turnout – race, poverty rates and unemployment rates – remain significant?Design/methodology/approachUsing county-level, publicly available data from twelve Midwest states with similar demographic and cultural characteristics, voter turnout in St. Louis City and St. Louis County were predicted using race, poverty rates and unemployment rates.FindingsFindings demonstrate that despite high concentration of poverty rates and above average percentages of Black residents, voter turnout was significantly higher than predicted. Additionally, findings contradict previous studies that found higher unemployment rates resulted in higher voter participation rates.Originality/valueThis study suggests that the threat of COVID-19 and fear of an increase in police violence may have introduced physical risk as a new theoretical component to rational choice theory for the general election in 2020.

Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election

Whether deserved on not, US Presidents often receive the blame or the credit for the nature of the economy and direction of the country. Therefore, the status of the economy and the country in an election year can be a very important factor in election success for an incumbent President (or his party if an incumbent is not running). This is especially true in ‘battleground states' due to the presence of the Electoral College system where Presidential candidates need only win different combinations of states in order to become President. However, the 2020 Presidential election was vastly different from past election cycles in that an additional variable, COVID-19, was added to the decision calculus of voters. Eventually, the 2020 election came down to the extremely slim margins in three states (Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin) and thin margins in two others (Pennsylvania and Michigan). This paper shows that deaths from COVID-19 at the county level played a small role in demotivating voters to turnout in 2020 to cast their vote for Joe Biden as President. In other words, without Covid-19, President Trump's losses within these five states would have been even larger.

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

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.

Health Risks and Voting: Emphasizing Safety Measures Taken to Prevent COVID-19 Does Not Increase Willingness to Vote in Person

The COVID-19 pandemic made salient the risks posed by an infectious disease at a polling place. To what degree did such health risks, as with other changes to voting costs, affect the willingness to vote in person? Could highlighting safety measures reduce the association between COVID fears and unwillingness to vote in person? Using both a representative survey of Connecticut voters and a survey experiment, we examine whether concerns about health diminish willingness to vote in person. We find correlational evidence that those who are more worried about COVID-19 are less likely to report they will vote in person, even when considering risk mitigation efforts. We then present causal evidence that mentioning the safety measures being taken does little to offset the negative effect of priming COVID-19 risk on willingness to vote in person. These results contribute to a growing literature that assesses how health risks affect in person voting. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of American Politics Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

COVID 19 fatalities burden in Asian countries: An analysis of pattern and determinants.

Covid 19 pandemic has severe implications on health and life of people. Asia being the most populous region has higher fatalities burden. Health infrastructure, stringent preventive measures by the government and public participation through adhering to social distancing have influence to check on fatalities' burden. The level of Social capital as well as voters' participation in a particular country can have influence on containment of COVID cases and fatalities. In this context, the main objectives of this study are to analyse pattern and trend of death burden for 45 Asian countries and impact of stringency measures by government, and voters' turnout ratio on death burden. However, for regression analysis only 32 countries are taken into account considering the availability of data for all variables. Multiple linear regression analysis is employed in a cross-sectional framework and Ordinary least square estimation technique with heteroscedastic adjusted standard errors have been used for estimation of coefficients. The results show that southern Asia contributes the highest share of fatality cases in total fatality cases of Asia with 71.43% share. It also has the highest share of confirmed cases in total confirmed cases of Asia with 71.72%. However, when we take the population into account, Western Asia leads in the share of confirmed COVID-19 cases and its associated fatality cases per million populations in Asia as compared to other Asian regions. The factors like health infrastructure and voters' turnover ratio are found to be significant and potential in reducing the new deaths per million populations. Though the coefficient of Stringency index has been negative and it did not emerge to be significant in Asian countries. The COVID related fatalities in Asian region are urban centric and urbanization proxy is found to be positive and significant. Diabetes prevalence rate has some heterogeneous result and in the present study its coefficient is not in the hypothesized direction. . The Countries should ramp up health infrastructure and necessary preparedness to deal with the subsequent waves and COVID related fatalities. Importance need to be given people's participation and their shared responsibilities in dealing with COVID cases and checking on fatalities. The realisation of social responsibility among the masses can lead to community participation and adhering to the protocols imposed by the government and helps in checking on spread of virus and associated death.

The Asian American Vote in 2020: Indicators of Turnout and Vote Choice.

What were the indicators of voter turnout and presidential vote choice among Asian Americans in 2020? We argue that 2020 was a unique year in which race was salient for Asian Americans due to the rise of anti-Asian attitudes attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and the opportunity to elect a vice presidential candidate of Asian descent. Because of this, racial considerations played a unique role that informed Asian American political participation and attitudes in this election. Using data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we identify the individual-level factors associated with turnout and presidential vote choice among Asian Americans. We find that stronger perceptions of racial discrimination were related to a higher likelihood of turnout and voting in support of the Democratic Party, especially among Asian immigrants relative to the native-born. This study offers new insight for when we can expect racial considerations to inform the politics of Asian Americans, who are the fastest growing racial group in the United States and therefore an increasingly important bloc of the electorate. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09844-9.

An Exploration of Youth Political Disengagement in the City of Cape Town

The Electoral Commission of SA shows that only over eight million out of more than 26.2-million registered voters voted in the 2021 local government elections. This is a cause for concern when this figure is compared with other elections, which amounted to a preliminary turnout of about 30.5% by Monday 01 November 2021 at 21h00. Thus, the lower voter turnout is arguably a true reflection of the citizens frustration with and distrust of politicians. This study aims to explore the socio-economic factors that contributed to young people’s apathy towards politics and discouraged them to engage in voting during COVID-19 and to suggest both short- and long-term solutions to address the youth political disengagement in South Africa. The qualitative approach was adopted in this study, followed by a convenient sample of 20 youths. Individual interviews was used to collect data. The collected data was anlysed through thematic analysis. The finding revealed that socio-economic factors such as nation-wide lockdown COVID-19 restrictions, youth unemployment, electoral system, poverty prevented young people from participating to political engagement. Accordingly, this study recommends for multifaceted electoral reforms in South Africa that will give voters the power to hold elected representatives accountable and provide clear details of who should hold a representative office. © 2022 Thulani Andrew Chauke. This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election

Whether deserved on not, US Presidents often receive the blame or the credit for the nature of the economy and direction of the country. Therefore, the status of the economy and the country in an election year can be a very important factor in election success for an incumbent President (or his party if an incumbent is not running). This is especially true in 'battleground states' due to the presence of the Electoral College system where Presidential candidates need only win different combinations of states in order to become President. However, the 2020 Presidential election was vastly different from past election cycles in that an additional variable, COVID-19, was added to the decision calculus of voters. Eventually, the 2020 election came down to the extremely slim margins in three states (Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin) and thin margins in two others (Pennsylvania and Michigan). This paper shows that deaths from COVID-19 at the county level played a small role in demotivating voters to turnout in 2020 to cast their vote for Joe Biden as President. In other words, without Covid-19, President Trump's losses within these five states would have been even larger.

Cost of Voting in the American States: 2022*

The ease of voting across the American States is constantly changing. This research updates work that established the relative "cost of voting" during presidential election cycles, in each of the 50 states, from 1996 to 2020. A 2022 iteration is necessary to consider the flurry of new legislative initiatives that passed state legislatures after the 2020 election cycle. Many states made voting easier by codifying changes composed in response to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Other states, over concerns about voter fraud and seemingly at the prompting of former President Donald Trump, took a step backward and made voting more difficult. We learn that Oregon, which has the most progressive automatic voter registration process and all-mail voting, maintains the first position as the easiest state to vote in. Mississippi (49th) and New Hampshire (50th) stay at the bottom of the rankings as the most difficult states for voting. Their failure to move is largely due to these states failing to keep pace with reforms like online voter registration, no excuse absentee voting, and automatic voter registration, which have taken place in other states. Voters in Vermont will find voting much less challenging in 2022 as the state has adopted nearly all the progressive reforms used in other states that make voting easier, not the least of which is an all-mail balloting process.

Electing the Mayors in Romania's Big Cities in 2020: Voter Turnout, Legislative Changes, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Local elections have been theorized by many scholars as lower rank or second-order national elections: they are less important, less relevant, and just not as interesting as national elections. In Romania, turnout in local elections was, until the mid-2000s, quite high, even if lower than in parliamentary elections. Since 2008, however, turnout in local elections has been consistently higher than in parliamentary elections. The electoral reform that started in 2011 had, over time, a negative influence on the electoral process in the local elections. In this paper, we argue that the transition from the election of mayors using a majority electoral system in two rounds to a single round has contributed to the decline of citizens' interest in local elections, exerting a detrimental influence on the quality of political representation in general. Despite the arguments used by many of the supporters of this electoral reform, that electing the mayors in just one round will generate an increase in turnout because the competition will be fiercer, the effect was the opposite. The year 2020 marked a historic low in terms of turnout in local elections in Romania. Analyzing the official electoral data at county level and for each county capital, we will show that the health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic had a minor influence on voting turnout. Instead, the specifics of the electoral law meant that, in the vast majority of county capitals, the turnout was significantly lower that the county average and the mayor was elected without reaching 50% of the votes (in many cases, the winning candidate failed to obtain more than 30% of the valid votes cast), which poses a major problem regarding the representativeness of elected mayors, as well as the stability and political balance within local political institutions.

Can Independents Save Democracy in an Era of Polarization?: Evidence from Korea

It is evident from the literature that political polarization has played a role in facilitating voter participation. While high participation in a representative democracy is beneficial, it becomes dangerous when this results from intense polarization. This is because polarization has a greater potential to undermine the principles of democratic pluralism. With data from the 21st Korean general assembly, I find that independent voters consider political issues to be important cues for participation even under extreme polarization. Short-term issues such as the government response to COVID-19 that have largely been the concern of independent voters, have had a significant effect on voter participation, and the evaluation of party nominations has also had an impact on turnout among independents. These findings show that Korean democracy has not been completely buried under the influence of polarization and that the political process of representative democracy in Korea is still operating normally thanks to the existence of independent voters.

Voting in a Pandemic: Lessons From the 2020 South Korean Legislative Election

In this paper, we examine the extent to which a government's response to a pandemic affects election outcomes. Using detailed data on South Korea's 21st legislative election, held in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that a candidate of the ruling Democratic Party was less preferred in electoral districts where the COVID-19 infection rate was higher. We also find that the South Korean government's successful control of the disease contributed significantly to the overwhelming victory of the ruling party against the leading opposition party. Specifically, our counterfactual analysis predicts that each party would have taken 129 and 102 of the 231 constituency seats considered in the analysis, respectively, had the COVID infection rate been the same as the OECD average during the election period. Given that the observed result was 147 to 84, this implies that 18 electees of the ruling party would have lost to the candidates of the leading opposition party, which in turn would have granted the opposition party the ability to block any attempt by the ruling party to fast-track debatable bills.

The Impact of Vote-By-Mail Policy on Turnout and Vote Share in the 2020 Election

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred many states and counties to reduce public health risks by adopting policies that made voting by mail easier in the 2020 general election. Employing a two-period difference-in-difference research design, this article investigates how these policy changes affected turnout and presidential vote share. We find that counties that moved to send registered voters mail-in ballots ahead of Election Day experienced 2.6 percent higher turnout compared to counties that made no change, although lesser reforms may have hindered turnout. We also find no evidence that making voting by mail easier conferred a partisan advantage. © 2022, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

Race, poverty and unemployment as quantitative predictors of voter turnout in St. Louis amidst COVID-19 and a racial justice movement

Purpose The 2020 election season brought with it a global public health pandemic and a reenergized racial justice movement. Given the social context of the intertwined pandemics of COVID-19 and racialized violence, do the traditional predictors of voter turnout - race, poverty rates and unemployment rates - remain significant? Design/methodology/approach Using county-level, publicly available data from twelve Midwest states with similar demographic and cultural characteristics, voter turnout in St. Louis City and St. Louis County were predicted using race, poverty rates and unemployment rates. Findings Findings demonstrate that despite high concentration of poverty rates and above average percentages of Black residents, voter turnout was significantly higher than predicted. Additionally, findings contradict previous studies that found higher unemployment rates resulted in higher voter participation rates. Originality/value This study suggests that the threat of COVID-19 and fear of an increase in police violence may have introduced physical risk as a new theoretical component to rational choice theory for the general election in 2020.

The impact of 2020 French municipal elections on the spread of COVID-19.

Soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the French government decided to still hold the first round of the 2020 municipal elections as scheduled on March 15. What was the impact of these elections on the spread of COVID-19 in France? Answering this question leads to intricate econometric issues as omitted variables may drive both epidemiological dynamics and electoral turnout, and as a national lockdown was imposed at almost the same time as the elections. In order to disentangle the effect of the elections from that of confounding factors, we first predict each department's epidemiological dynamics using information up to the election. We then take advantage of differences in electoral turnout across departments to identify the impact of the election on prediction errors in hospitalizations. We report a detrimental effect of the first round of the election on hospitalizations in locations that were already at relatively advanced stages of the epidemic. Estimates suggest that the elections accounted for at least 3,000 hospitalizations, or 11% of all hospitalizations by the end of March. Given the sizable health cost of holding elections during an epidemic, promoting ways of voting that reduce exposure to COVID-19 is key until the pandemic shows signs of abating.

Mass casualty event scenarios and political shifts: 2020 election outcomes and the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 models indicate a mass casualty event may potentially occur in the United States. Among numerous social and economic changes, the potential to reshape the political landscape exists. The theoretical perspective of politics-administration dichotomy is used to examine the rhetoric, power, and authority of public health messages during the pandemic. This study considers political shifts using state-level data on population, historical voter turnout, and projected COVID-19 cases number coupled with national-level data on voter participation by age group and COVID-19 fatality rates. Developing a formula to calculate these data, we project the extent to which the number of voters from each party could diminish. The analysis shows the potential for significant political changes due to the disproportionate loss of older voters in key swing states in the months leading to the 2020 presidential election.

Voting under threat: Evidence from the 2020 French local elections.

We study how COVID-related risk affected participation across the French territory in the March 2020 local elections. We document that participation went down disproportionately in towns exposed to higher COVID-19 risk. Towns that lean towards the far-right saw a stronger drop in turnout, in particular in the vicinity of known clusters of infection. We argue that these patterns are partly a result of risk perceptions, and not only of political considerations. We use data on the drop in cinema admissions in early March 2020 and show that these went down more around infection clusters, especially in areas with substantial vote for the far-right. Taken together, our findings suggest that the fear of COVID-19 may have been on average more prevalent among far-right voters, contributing to a drop in their electoral participation.