Pandemic Fear, Media and Democracy

• In Event: Information and Voting

Abstract

France held the first turn of municipal elections on 15/03/2020, at the time when Covid-19 virus had reached only some departments and with different intensities. Exploiting the exogeneity of temporal and geographical variation in the spread of Covid-19 we identify the effects of virus’ fear on the elections. With a difference in differences approach, we show that the number of Covid-19 cases in a department has a negative effect on turnout also when controlling for pre-trends, moreover we find evidence of a significant effect on the political outcome, namely a shift towards platforms that mention the need for "strong and stable governments" or that "appeal to national solidarity".In addition, we study Covid-19 fear transmission channels, in particular we look at the effect of the exposure to Covid-19 related content in the local newspapers that we measure with an index based on text analysis of the first pages in the weeks before the elections. We found that exposure to Covid-19 news affects both turnout and political outcome, however, the effect is stronger when news refers to government restrictions in response to the pandemic such as forced school closure. We also found that within the same district distance from municipalities where schools were closed is correlated with changes in voting behavior, confirming the policy as a possible relevant channel in perception of Covid-19 threat.

Authors

• Giulia Leila Travaglini, columbia unviersity

• Alberto Mola, KU Leuven