Abstract
What is the effect of pandemics on partisan perceptions of government competence? Taking the case of Covid‐19 in the UK, we explore how voters’ assessments of the government’s handling of the economy and health were affected by four events: the first UK Covid‐19 death; the national lockdown; Boris Johnson’s hospitalisation; and Cummings’ scandal. Using a large representative weekly survey in the last year totalling over around 30’000 respondents, our results show that Labour voters had the worst assessments of government handling. The first death deteriorated perceptions of government handling of health among both Labour and Conservative voters, while Boris Johnson’s hospitalisation improved perceptions among most voters. Lockdown improved the perception of health handling but at the cost of more negative perceptions of its handling of the economy. The Cummings scandal had a negative effect on perceptions of government handling of economy but surprisingly improved perceptions of its handling of health.
Highlights
The recent Covid-19 pandemic represents a unique opportunity to examine whether and how a shock to the distribution of economic and health risks affects differences in voters’ evaluations of government competence along partisan lines
What is the effect of Covid-19 related policies, announcements and events on perceptions of government competence during the pandemic? Second, do these effects depend on the partisan affiliation of different groups of voters and do partisan differences remain once we control for other relevant socio-demographic and economic covariates? Both questions are not a priori straightforward to theorise since the extent to which individuals update their political preferences and evaluations of governments in response to shocks is contested
We present the results from a series of OLS regressions to evaluate the extent to which the four events and partisan differences change perceptions of government handling of economy and health during pandemic times
Summary
The recent Covid-19 pandemic represents a unique opportunity to examine whether and how a shock to the distribution of economic and health risks affects differences in voters’ evaluations of government competence along partisan lines. We present the results from a series of OLS regressions to evaluate the extent to which the four events and partisan differences change perceptions of government handling of economy and health during pandemic times.
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