Intertwined Geographies of the Pandemic and the U.S. Presidential Election of 2020: COVID-19 Prevalence and Donald Trump

ABSTRACT

For all, 2020 was beyond extra ordinary. While at the start of 2020 much of the world was transfixed on Donald Trump and the upcoming 2020 presidential election in the United States, a virus began emerging in China. In the early months of 2020, the term's coronavirus or COVID-19, would become too familiar and by March 2020 as the world faced the first major Pandemic since the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918. In the U.S., the reactions and beliefs about the ferocity of the virus and the mitigation strategies to halt the spread became deeply entangled in the nation's already highly partisan political divides. This chapter will focus on the impacts of COVID-19 on the 2020 presidential election. Specifically, this chapter will provide a temporal and spatial representation of COVID-19 on the 2020 election cycle from the presidential primaries, to the presidential campaigns, the November 3, 2020 election, and ending with the January 20, 2021 inauguration of newly elected President Joe Biden. It was clear, after the election distinct spatial patterns between COVID-19 rates and partisan preference were identifiable. In general, higher rates of COVID-19 correlated with higher support for Donald Trump. Maps and statistical analyses complement the investigation of a uniquely intertwined political geography between the spread of COVID-19 and American electoral politics. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.