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.
xmlui.dri2xhtml.METS-1.0.item-contributor-funder:
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Comunidad de Madrid
Sponsor:
We would like to thank PAQ Research agency for sharing data from the “Life during the Pandemic” panel survey with us. Palguta gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Community of Madrid via grants 2017/T2-SOC-5363 and EPUC3M11 (V PRICIT). Levínsky was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic through the project SHARE–CZ+ (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001740).
Project:
Comunidad de Madrid. 2017/T2-SOC-5363 Comunidad de Madrid. EPUC3M11
Keywords:
Covid-19
,
Election
,
Event study
,
Natural experiment
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 exElections 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.[+][-]