The COVID-19 pandemic's effects on voter turnout

Matteo Picchio; Raffaella Santolini

doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102161

The COVID-19 pandemic's effects on voter turnout

Eur J Polit Econ. 2022 Jun:73:102161. doi: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102161. Epub 2021 Dec 29.

Authors

Matteo Picchio^{1

2

3

4}, Raffaella Santolini¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Marche Polytechnic University, Italy.
² Department of Economics, Ghent University, Belgium.
³ IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany.
⁴ GLO - Global Labor Organization.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the risk of participating in public events, among them elections. We assess whether the voter turnout in the 2020 local government elections in Italy was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We do so by exploiting the variation among municipalities in the intensity of the COVID-19 outbreak as measured by the mortality rate among the elderly. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in the elderly mortality rate decreased the voter turnout by 0.5 percentage points, with no gender differences in the behavioural response. The effect was especially strong in densely populated municipalities. We do not detect statistically significant differences in voter turnout among different levels of autonomy from the central government.

Keywords: COVID-19 outbreak; Italian municipalities; Mortality rate; Voter turnout.