Publication: Do elections accelerate the COVID-19 pandemic?: Evidence from a natural experiment
Loading...
Identifiers
Publication date
2022-01-01
Defense date
Authors
Advisors
Tutors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer
Impact
Export
Abstract
Elections define representative democracies but also produce spikes in physical
mobility if voters need to travel to polling places. In this paper, we examine whether
large-scale, in-person elections propagate the spread of COVID-19. We exploit a
natural experiment from the Czech Republic, which biannually renews mandates in
one-third of Senate constituencies that rotate according to the 1995 election law. We
show that in the second and third weeks after the 2020 elections (held on October
9–10), new COVID-19 infections grew significantly faster in voting compared
to non-voting constituencies. A temporarily related peak in hospital admissions and
essentially no changes in test positivity rates suggest that the acceleration was not
merely due to increased testing. The acceleration did not occur in the population
above 65, consistently with strategic risk-avoidance by older voters. Our results
have implications for postal voting reforms or postponing of large-scale, in-person
(electoral) events during viral outbreaks.
Description
Keywords
Covid-19, Election, Event study, Natural experiment
Bibliographic citation
Palguta, J., Levínský, R., & Škoda, S. (2022). Do elections accelerate the COVID-19 pandemic?. Evidence from a natural experiment. Journal of Population Economics, 35 (1), pp. 197-240.