The Relationship between Ideology and COVID-19 Deaths: What We Know and What We Still Need to Know

Several recent studies have investigated if support for Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election of 2018 is positively associated with COVID-19 infections and deaths in Brazil. In these studies, COVID-19 outcomes in 2020 and 2021 are the dependent variables, and votes for Jair Bolsonaro in the 20...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brazilian political science review 2022, Vol.16 (3), p.1-41
Main Authors: Barberia, Lorena, Moreira, Natália de Paula, Carvalho, Rebeca de Jesus, Oliveira, Maria Leticia Claro, Rosa, Isabel Seelaender Costa, Zamudio, Marcela
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggregate data
Bias
Bolsonaro, Jair
Confounding (Statistics)
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Disease transmission
ecological inference
Ecological research
Ideology
Infections
Local elections
Measurement
measurement error
Measurement errors
omitted variable bias
Pandemics
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Politics
Presidential elections
Prevention
Protestantism
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Social distancing
Suicides & suicide attempts
temporal dynamics
Variables
Voting
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Summary:Several recent studies have investigated if support for Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election of 2018 is positively associated with COVID-19 infections and deaths in Brazil. In these studies, COVID-19 outcomes in 2020 and 2021 are the dependent variables, and votes for Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election (as a proxy for ideology) are the key explanatory variable. This article discusses why ecological research designs are difficult to test empirically. We discuss why correlations between vote shares and COVID-19 outcomes using aggregate data can produce biased inferences, and we specifically focus on measurement error, aggregation bias, and spatial and temporal dynamics.
ISSN:1981-3821
1981-3821
DOI:10.1590/1981-3821202200030001