Chronic. Will the Covid-19 pandemic be the determining factor for the electoral results of the various political parties in the next upcoming elections? Curiously, opinions remain very divided as to its impact on the US presidential election of November 3, 2020.
For example, the Associated Press news agency announced on November 6 that the American electoral districts which had experienced the worst death rates from Covid-19 had voted overwhelmingly in favor of the outgoing president (“Counties With Worst Virus Surges Overwhelmingly Voted Trump ”). Likewise, National Public Radio said the vote margin in favor of Trump had increased in the most affected ridings (“Many Places Hard Hit By COVID-19 Leaned More Toward Trump In 2020 Than 2016”).
Other analyzes, which adjusted the calculations with different characteristics of the constituencies, on the other hand revealed a negative impact of the pandemic on the margin of the outgoing president (L. Baccini, A. Brodeur and S. Weymouth: “The COVID- 19 Pandemic and the 2020 US Presidential Election ”). According to this methodology, with 5% fewer cases, the result of the American election could have been different, thanks to the functioning of the electoral college.
“The Spanish flu, much more serious than the Covid-19 in number of deaths, had only a very weak negative effect on the results of the elections to the American Congress in 1918”
It is striking that the impact of the pandemic on votes is not visibly greater. But the comparison with a study published as a working document on the electoral impact of the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed between 617,000 and 675,000 Americans (according to the methodology of the estimate), is enlightening in this regard. It shows us that this epidemic – yet massively more serious than the Covid-19 in number of deaths – had only a very weak negative effect on the results of the elections to Congress in 1918, or to the presidency of the country in 1920. (L. Abad and N. Maurer: “Do Pandemics Shape Elections? Retrospective voting in the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic in the United States”, Discussion Paper 15678, Center for Economic Policy Research).
By exploiting the uneven arrival of the pandemic in the various regions of the United States in 1918, the authors show that the districts which had by that date had an excess mortality twice as high as the average saw a decrease of between 0.6 and 1 percentage point for outgoing elected officials. It is certainly a significant impact, but very far from being an avalanche.
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