The COVID-19 pandemic and the electoral performance of governing parties in electoral democracies

YP Su; ER Rashkova

doi:10.1177/01925121231195612

The COVID-19 pandemic and the electoral performance of governing parties in electoral democracies

YP Su^*
, ER Rashkova

^*Corresponding author for this work

National Chengchi University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had tremendous impacts on political, economic and social developments across the globe. Although some studies show that voters tend to hold incumbent parties accountable for managing the pandemic, the results of others suggest that the rally-round-the-flag strategy might be at plan. We contend that voters tend to hold the incumbent party accountable, even during an exogenous shock, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesize that more stringent government responses to tackle the pandemic and more COVID-19 casualties tend to decrease the electoral support for incumbent parties. Using original data from 67 national elections in 56 electoral democracies from mid-March 2020 to May 2022, the empirical results support our hypothesis.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	389-405
Number of pages	17
Journal	International Political Science Review
Volume	45
Issue number	3
Early online date	27 Sept 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231195612
Publication status	Published - Jun 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan (grant number: 112-2410-H-004 -090 -MY2).

Funders	Funder number
National Science and Technology Council	112-2410-H-004 -090 -MY2
National Science and Technology Council

Keywords

Covid-19
Electoral democracies
Incumbent party
Political accountability
Retrospective voting

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10.1177/01925121231195612

su-rashkova-2023-the-covid-19-pandemic-and-the-electoral-performance-of-governing-parties-in-electoral-democraciesFinal published version, 409 KBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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The COVID-19 pandemic and the electoral performance of governing parties in electoral democracies

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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