How does COVID-19 affect electoral participation? evidence from the French municipal elections

This article investigates the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on electoral participation. We study the French municipal elections that took place at the very beginning of the ongoing pandemic and held in over 9,000 municipalities on March 15, 2020. In addition to the simple note that turnout rates...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-02, Vol.16 (2), p.e0247026-e0247026
Main Authors: Noury, Abdul, François, Abel, Gergaud, Olivier, Garel, Alexandre
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accident prevention
Biology and Life Sciences
Business administration
Chronic illnesses
Cities - statistics & numerical data
Citizen participation
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 - psychology
Elections
Epidemics
Female
France
France - epidemiology
Health aspects
Health risks
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Immune system
Influence
Local elections
Male
Mayors
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental health
Obesity
Pandemics - statistics & numerical data
People and places
Political aspects
Politics
Population Density
SARS-CoV-2 - pathogenicity
Sickle cell disease
Social Sciences
Statistics
Viral diseases
Voter behavior
Voter turnout
Voters
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Summary:This article investigates the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on electoral participation. We study the French municipal elections that took place at the very beginning of the ongoing pandemic and held in over 9,000 municipalities on March 15, 2020. In addition to the simple note that turnout rates decreased to a historically low level, we establish a robust relationship between the depressed turnout rate and the disease. Using various estimation strategies and employing a large number of potential confounding factors, we find that the participation rate decreases with city proximity to COVID-19 clusters. Furthermore, the proximity has conditioned impacts according to the proportion of elderly -who are the most threatened- within the city. Cities with higher population density, where the risk of infection is higher, and cities where only one list ran at the election, which dramatically reduces competitiveness, experienced differentiated effects of distance.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0247026