Polls and the Pandemic: Estimating the Electoral Effects of a SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak
| Author | Indraneel Sircar |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920979189 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | COVID-19: Pandemics, Global Politics and Societal ChallengesThe Null Hypothesis |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920979189
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(2) 311 –323
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920979189
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Polls and the Pandemic:
Estimating the Electoral
Effects of a SARS-CoV-2
Outbreak
Indraneel Sircar
Abstract
The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and the associated Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
pandemic have had far-reaching health, economic, social and political impacts. The latter is the
focus of this research note, which proposes using a difference-in-differences approach to estimate
the electoral impact of reported SARS-CoV-2 infection rates. The approach is illustrated using data
from the 2020 Croatian parliamentary election. The outcomes of interest are the vote shares for
the dominant Croatian Democratic Union party, as well as the turnout. The analysis concludes that
there is no evidence that reported county-level infection rates affected Croatian Democratic Union
support or turnout. However, results using this approach may be affected by the statistical power
of the analysis, issues related to causal identification and reliability of infection rate measures.
Nonetheless, the difference-in-differences approach can potentially be applied in contexts around
the world to estimate the electoral impact of reported SARS-CoV-2 infection rates.
Keywords
SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, elections, difference-in-differences, causal inference, Croatia
Accepted: 17 November 2020
Introduction
The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and associated acute respiratory Coronavirus
Disease 2019 (COVID-19) first came to light in December 2019, when a cluster of cases
of pneumonia was identified in Wuhan, the capital of the Chinese province of Hubei.
Chinese scientists isolated and identified the novel coronavirus on 7 January 2020 (Wang
et al., 2020). Over the following months, SARS-CoV-2 spread first within China and then
around the world. On 11 March 2020, with 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4291
deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) declared a (global) pandemic.
Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Indraneel Sircar, Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science, Columbia
House, Aldwych, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: i.sircar@lse.ac.uk
979189PSW0010.1177/1478929920979189Political Studies ReviewSircar
research-article2020
The Null Hypothesis
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