Dying to Vote: Covid-19 and Its Impact on the 2020 Presidential Election

• In Event: COVID-19 and Voting Behavior

Abstract

This project seeks to analyze the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. Given how unexpectedly close the election was compared to polling expectations, I seek to understand if Covid-19 made a difference in the actual outcome of the race. County-level analyses are employed in this paper. Several measures of the impact of Covid-19 at the county-level are employed, including death rate, infection rate in the weeks leading up to the election, recovery rate, and measuring the total number of people infected. 2016 county-level presidential results are used as a baseline to measure county-level partisanship across elections. Changes in employment prior to the recession versus employment prior to the election is employed as a control. Growth in population and racial diversity within a county are employed as additional controls. I first look at its impact on county-by-county results nationally in 2020 versus the 2016 results. I then look at its impact on county-by-county results in battleground states and compare the 2020 results in those states versus the results in 2016. The ultimate goals of my project are to assess if the popular belief that the pandemic influenced the results of the election is valid and to serve as a possible case study for a critical event which may sway an election in today’s highly-polarized political environment.

Author

• Giancarlo A Gonzalez, Lincoln Memorial University